“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: lov...”

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

“This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. ...”

“I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? Today, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplici...”

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose...”

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.”

“No work is so important you have to do it.”

“We have every piece of data on 200 million people, he said, ticking off his fingers. We have their bank accounts. We know how much they make and how much they spend and where. We have their social ...”

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”

“The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obsceniti...”

“You and me, baby girl, we're too jaded. We just want mind-blowing sex with someone who knows we're fucked up and accepts it.”

“In this world, if you raise objections saying, my mother-in-law harasses me. My father-in-law harasses me, then there is no end to it. Instead, just put up a sign that says, no objection whatsoever...”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”