Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.

Hatred destroys the person who hates.

It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.

All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.