The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.

The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.

Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.

...and yet could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn't, of course, simply the onions -- it was the sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable.

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.