Perhaps, he thought, true pure love, like all flowers, flourished best with its roots in muck and mud. Perhaps that was a law of life that held everything together.

That question is too good to spoil with an answer.

All human beings were of course unique, and they only discovered that when someone else fell in love with them or when no one ever fell in love with them.

But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute.

I never understood how anyone could feel small compared with the universe. After all, man knows how overwhelmingly large it is, and a few others things besides, and that means he is not small. The fact that man has discovered all this precisely proves his greatness.

Using someone's name during a conversation was like a casual caress, like stroking their hair.

A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat.