Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)