I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.

Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.

Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.

I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself

Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training since childhood.

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.