It was the hour of prayer. Black-beetles exploded against the walls like crackers. More than a dozen crawled over the tiles with injured wings. It infuriated him to think that there were still people...
It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.
In her view when a thing was done, it was done: remorse died with the act.
I was baptized one foggy afternoon about four o'clock. I couldn't think of any names I particularly wanted, so I kept my old name. I was alone with the fat priest; it was all very quickly and formally...
I thought to myself: 'Is the pain a little less than when I went away?' and tried to persuade myself that it was so.
I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken...
He had no accomplice except the credulity of other men.
Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their coura...
Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long.
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
When I began to realize how often we quarrelled, how often I picked on her with nervous irritation, I became aware that our love was doomed: love had turned into a love-affair with a beginning and an...
What I've done is far worse than murder - that's an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it's over and done, but I'm carrying my corruption around with me. It's the coating of my stomach.' He threw her wrists...
We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.
There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.
Then his friend said, 'If you fly you will save a day.' He nodded, he agreed, he would sacrifice his ticket, he would save a day. I ask you what does a day saved matter to him or to you? A day saved f...
That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape--anywhere--for anyone? It was worth murdering a...
Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothin...
She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.
Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?