Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.

Failure too is a form of death.

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

American bankers believe in the personal touch; the teller conveys a sense that he happens to be there accidentally and he is overjoyed at the lucky chance of the encounter.

Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.