“Death is not in the nature of things; it is the nature of things. But what dies is the form. The matter is immortal.”

“The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.”

“Each death laid a dreadful charge of complicity on the living; each death was incongenerous, its guilt irreducible, its sadness immortal; a bracelet of bright hair about the bone.”

“The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for.”

“I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.”

“Maurice once said to me- when I had asked him a question rather like yours - he said, "An answer is always a form of death" There was something else in her face then. It was not implaceable; but in some way impermeable. 'I think questions are a form of life”

“A look I shall never forget, because it was almost one of hatred, and hatred in her face was like spite in the Virgen Mary's; it reversed the entire order of nature.”