“Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger than someone you know. Why is that?”“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as they wish us to be”

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

“Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act.”

“Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely, the better. … It’s difficult to hate an idea. … It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group … anything.”

“I miss having a villain. Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely the better.”

“I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.”

“...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.”