invaders always destroy libraries.

Is it really beyond our wits to devise some form of censorship which would trap only the crudely sadistic?

In Europe, war is a disease which has been in the family for generations: no one is surprised when it makes another leap. Even the patient only attends to it with part of his mind.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

The past is able to close round certain moments, as if they were seeds, and deliver them again fresh and living in the present.