It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.

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

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.