Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.

He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

If you were blind you would hardly have fallen in love in the first place. But now, do you truly wish to see the beloved in the cold clarity of the visual apparatus? It may be in your better interest to throw a veil over the gaze, so as to keep her alive in her archetypal, goddesslike form.

Despair ... is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

There seemed nothing to do but live.

he knows too much about himself to subject her to a morning after, when he will be cold, surly, impatient to be alone.