To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor - the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

One forgets so quickly one's own youth.

Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.

He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.

I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.