“The effect of untrue statements on casual conversations is one of my great loves, my great ongoing investigations.”

“One cultivates one's life, one's friends, one's means, one's hopes. One goes from place to place, from triumph to triumph, in search of ambition and ambition's remedy as though in flight across some imagined map, the subject of a conversation in a comfortable English room.”

“We tire differently if we love or love not.”

“The old man took out an extraordinarily beautiful and elegant handkerchief and gave it to her to dry her tears. It was the sort of handkerchief that one might be content to be judged by if it was all that remained of one after one's death.”

“If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.”

“First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.”

“The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.”