The final tormenting, unanswerable question: what is 'success' in mourning?
Tertullian said of Christian belief that it was true because it was impossible. Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours....
Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.
Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?
I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.
Every love story is a potential grief story.
A common response in surveys of religious attitudes is to say something like, 'I don't go to church, but I have my own personal idea of God.' This kind of statement makes me in turn react like a philo...
The present looks back at some great figure of an earlier century and wonders, Was he on our side? Was he a goodie? What a lack of self-confidence this implies: the present wants both to patronise the...
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.
Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everythi...
how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life. And I remain deeply attached to the physical book and the physical bookshop.
You realize how sympathy and antagonism can coexist. You are discovering how many seemingly incompatible emotions can thrive, side by side, in the same human heart.
You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image...
Noah couldn’t do anything without first wondering what He would think. Now that’s no way to go on. Always looking over your shoulder for approval – it’s not adult, is it?
Margarita mėgdavo sakyti, kad yra dvi rūšys moterų: tos, kurios matomos kiaurai, ir tos, kurios nešioja paslaptį. Ir kad tai yra svarbiausia, ką vyrai išsyk pajunta, ir svarbiausia, kas juos patraukia...
He never recorded the writer or the source: he didn't want to be bullied by reputation; truth should stand by itself, clear and unsupported.
Era ciudat felul în care, pe măsură ce îmbătrâneai, vanitatea era tot mai puțin un viciu și devenea aproape opusul ei: o cerință morală.
Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.
There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine.