We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow.

I sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow — written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.

Lose your temper and you lose the fight.

I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.

'1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.