Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped.

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.

To comfort me is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time: if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.

From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.