Every man is made of clay and diamond, and no woman can nourish both.

A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.

I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.

'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oа reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine

History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.