The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.

The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar "queen", alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.

Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.

It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating.

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

That is a real attitude - to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life.