She knew, of course that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she ever had- he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength

This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.