“My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough?”

“The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?”

“I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.”

“The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.”

“For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.”

“I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me.”

“He lifted me up and held me close against him, my head on his shoulder. At that moment I loved him. In the morning light he was as golden, as soft, as gentle as myself, and he would protect me.”