A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that?

Sweet words. Gentle deceptive balm. Help, love, to belong together, to come back again— words, sweet words. Nothing but words. How many words existed for this simple, wild, cruel attraction of two bodies! What a rainbow of imagination, lies, sentiment, and self-deception enclosed it!

One lost easiest what one held in one’s arms— never what one left.

I hadn't failed, I had gained a second, heaven-sent life with Helen—and even the despair that had come to me and still haunted my sleep from time to time was possible only because there had been something else: Paris, Helen, and the unbelievable feeling of not being alone.

...and without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die.

My healthy blood was powerless to cure the sick blood of my beloved. That was beyond understanding. And so is death.

As far as I know, only the old Greeks had gods of drinking and the joy of life: Bacchus and Dionysus. Instead of that we have Freud, inferiority complexes and the psychoanalysis. We’re afraid of the too great words in love and not afraid of much too great words in politics. A sorry generation!

Гледах го да върви по улицата надолу с куфара в ръка, окаяна фигура, образа на вечния рогоносец и на вечния любещ.Ала от цялата галерия тъпи победители не бе ли той притежавал по-дълбоко човека, когото обичаше? И какво притежаваме в действителност. Защо е тази врява около неща, които в най-добрия случай са само взети за известно време назаем; и защо са тези брътвежи за това, дали ги притежаваме повече или по-малко, след като измамната дума „притежавам“ означава само: да прегърнем нищото?

I stand there and wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love.