If two people loved, they slept together; it was a mathematical formula, tested and proved by human experience.

If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.

Its typical of Mexico, of the whole human race perhaps — violence in favour of an ideal and then the ideal lost but the violence just going on.

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.

You cannot love without intuition.

I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.

They are always saying God loves us. If thats love Id rather have a bit of kindness.