Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.

He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.

And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.

Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.