Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.

Love is so small it can tear itself through the eye of a needle

Between the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds.

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized

Meanwhile with the help of an anecdote I fell in love. Words caravaggio. They have a power.

There always should be something hanging unfinished before a scene ends so that there's a reason for going to the next scene.