We couldn’t be sure of anything except the power of love…and we are under no requirement to believe in a particular source of that love as long as we could keep giving and receiving some in our own li...
The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Politicians who talk about purity usually end up deciding who is pure and who is not.
Ao sairmos para o anoitecer dourado das ruas bizantinas, refleti como era estranho que, mesmo sob as circunstâncias mais extraordinárias, durante episódios mais perturbadores da vida, nos lugares mais...
Do you think artists are supposed to be happy? -Everyone is supposed to be. -I said staunchly,and I knew that I was indeed an idiot and that was my destiny and I didn't mind it
The station was crowded by the time the express pulled up. I felt then, as I do now, that there is no joy like the arrival of a train [...] particularly a European train that will carry you south.
Strangers are strange to each other.
Si tuvieras que elegir entre la cordura, tu vida tal como la recuerdas, antes que la verdadera inestabilidad, ¿qué elegirías como manera adecuada para vivir de un estudioso?
It was the beginning of that long bifurcation that became my life: Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish.
It gave me a feeling of temporary acceptance into that elite community, to stroll across the quad at his side. It also gave me my first faint quiver of sexual belonging, the elusive feeling that if I...
In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called by myself; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if...
I flipped through the rest of the pages—when you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.
He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.
Hay cosas menores, pero aun así muy importantes. No es amable. No sabe cuándo ha de decir algo que consuele y cuándo hay que callar. La historia le importa un pimiento. No tiene ojos grises dulces ni...
Above all, he encourages her to paint, nodding with approval at even her most unusual experiments with color, light, rough brushwork [...]. She explains to him that she believes painting should reflec...
Then you must say to her, ‘Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you...
What will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?
We went on growing food and eating and sleeping and I cooked for a big crowd here every day, all my family. What else could we do? You just go on, if you have to.
Then he said a strange thing, but to himself. `They lived, didn't they?' And I said yes, that when one reads old letters one understands that people in the past really did live, and it is very touchin...
The study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.