“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.”

“Because this age and the next ageEngender in the ditch,No man can know a happy manFrom any passing wretch,If Folly link with EleganceNo man knows which is which.”

“Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.”

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.”