“I hesitated. Karla once said that men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, she said, it's the other way around.”

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it's the other way around”

“I went to war. .... I survived, while other men around me died. ... men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference.”

“There's no meanness too spiteful or too cruel, Didier once said to me, when we hate someone for all the wrong reasons.”

“Its a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them. I loved her voice, but I didn't really hear the fear & the anguish in it.”

“Some loves are like that. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, & your self-respect & independence. After a while you start throwing people out - friends, everyone you know. & it's still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, & you know it's going to take you down with it. I've seen that happen to a lot of people. I think that's why I'm sick of love. - Karla”

“The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.- Karla”