Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.

...she merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell.

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

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

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).

Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)