“i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.”

“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”

“A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.”

“She searched the truth with an anguish almost as great as her terrible fear of finding it .”

“There was no sleeper more elegant than she, with her curved body posed for a dance and her hand across her forehead, but there was also no one more ferocious when anyone disturbed the sensuality of her thinking she was still asleep when she no longer was.”

“I have supped full with horrors.”

“Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”