“Time played on the opposite team.”

“The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as excessively devout, users as benefactors, the small minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegent and the feeble minded as intellectual.”

“Time plays for the other team.”

“What I'm searching for is the opposite of an intellectual, in other words, someone intelligent.”

“He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist who was playing a piece by Granados with velvet fingers.”

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

“With women, the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.”