Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.

Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

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

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

You cannot love without intuition.

Destruction after all is a form of creation.