When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?

They didn't recognize me," I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm. "It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.

The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.

We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves.

To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.

This morning I understand what it means to die: when we disappear, it is the others who die for us, for here I am, lying on a cold pavement and it is not the dying I care about; it has no more meaning this morning that it did yesterday. But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is about then it really is the tragedy they say it is.