Why is it that human beings are allowed to grow up without the necessary apparatus to make sound ethical decisions?

And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture.

I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn't talking to them.

Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Saddest of all are the woman who were brought up to believe that self-sacrifice is the highest female virtue.

What other places are there in the world than those discovered on a lover’s body?

In my country there are no gods left. The Romans have driven them out. There are some who say that they have hidden themselves in the mountains, but I do not believe it. Three nights I have been on the mountains seeking them everywhere. I did not find them. And at last I called them by their names, and they did not come. I think they are dead.

Sempre pensamos que aquilo de que precisamos para transformar tudo — o milagre — está em outro lugar, mas muitas vezes está ali, bem ao nosso lado. Algumas vezes, o milagre somos nós mesmos.