“Men who loved you when you were twenty, and who continue to see you the way you looked then are impossible to replace.”

“When you're twenty, love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it's over you can hardly remember how it happened...Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out.”

“When you love someone as much as that, you don't believe they can die. You think your love protects them.”

“The way a man drinks in company tells you nothing about him, but the way he drinks when alone reveals, without his realizing it, the very depths of his soul.”

“Adieu," he said, "this is goodbye. I'll never forget you, never."She stood silent. He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears. He turned away.At this moment she wasn't ashamed of loving him, because her physical desire had gone and all she felt towards him now was pity and a profound, almost maternal tenderness. She forced herself to smile. "Like the Chinese mother who sent her son off to war telling him to be careful 'because war has its dangers,' I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.Yes. Because it is precious to me.”

“When I was a boy, playing at the beach, I remember a game I loved, which was an omen of my future life. I would dig a channel with high sides in the sand for the sea to fill. But when the water flooded the path I created for it with such violence that it destroyed everything in its way: my castles made of pebbles, my dikes of sand. It swept away everything, destroying it all, then disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart, yet not daring to ask for pity, since the sea had only responded to my call. It's the same with love. You call out for it, you plan its course. The wave crashes into your heart, but it's so different from how you imagined it, so bitter and icy.”

“After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees other enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire.”