From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward.

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

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

People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.

She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.

People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.

To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in.