“He already had one foot in the winter of heaven. He was going to be whisked up.”

“One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.”

“If he lies pressed against me, he gently twines his legs about mine and our legs are merged by the very soft cloth of our pajamas; he then takes great pains to find the right spot to cuddle his cheek. So long as he is not sleeping, I feel the quivering of his eyelids and upturned lashes against the very sensitive skin of my neck. If he feels a tickling in his nostrils, his laziness and drowsiness keep him from lifting his hand, so that in order to scratch himself he rubs his nose against my beard, thus giving me delicate little taps with his head, like a young calf sucking its mother.”

“Thereafter, he ennobled shame. He bore it in my presence like a burden, like a tiger clinging to his shoulders, the threat of which imparted to his shoulders a most insolent submissiveness.”

“The Archangel took his role of fucker seriously. It made him sing the Marseillaise, for now he was proud of being a Frenchman and a Gallic cock, of which only males are proud. Then he died in the war.”

“Neither the state guards nor the municipal police stopped me. What they saw going by was no longer a man but the curious product of misfortune, something to which laws could not be applied. I had exceeded the bounds of indecency.”

“He did not joke, as the newspapers dared report, for sarcasm is bitter and conceals ferments of despair.”