She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.

The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.

I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.

Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.

She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

The citadel of Machaerus rose east of the Dead Sea on a basalt Peak shaped like a cone, girdled by four deep valleys; two about its sides, one in front, and the fourth behind.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.