His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.

We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

History is the lies of the victors.