If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

Those who marry God can become domesticated too - it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word Love means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and Ave Maria like dearest is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves - it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity.

Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.

Have you seen a room from which faith has gone? Like a marriage from which love has gone. And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

The problem of pretending to be alive.