The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

Most of our love is shabby stuff, but there is always a thin line of gold, the bit of pure love on which all the rest depends -- and which redeems all the rest.

It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish - graceful, mysterious, desirable and free - and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.