A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.

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

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.