“I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.”

“Everything in life in nonsense. It's just a question of persepctive”

“You women listen more to your heart and less to all the nonsense. That's why you live longer.”

“I swallowed, feeling my pulse race, and gave silent thanks that there were no eyewitnesses to my blushing, which could have set a cigar alight even a foot away.”

“A man who could urinate standing up and without help was a man in a fit state to face his responsibilities.”

“...anyhow, as I was saying, if you ever have a daughter, you'll begin, without realizing it, to divide men into two camps: those you suspect are sleeping with her and those you don't. Whoever says that's not true is lying through his teeth.”

“I found my father asleep in his dining-room armchair, with a blanket over his legs and his favorite book open in his hands--a copy of Voltaire's Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year, the only times I heard him laugh heartily. I observed him: his hair was gray, thinning, and the skin on his face had begun to sag around his cheekbones. I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories, as if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.”