The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

What is lawful is not always identical to what is right.

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.

Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy.

You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

It's amazing how much punishment we can take.

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.