But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

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.

You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.

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.

I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.

Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away.