“In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.”

He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.

It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

God save us always,’ I said ‘from the innocent and the good.

The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.

We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

You needn’t be so scared. Love doesn’t end. Just because we don’t see each other.

It’s a good world if you don’t weaken.

As long as one suffers one lives.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

All good novelists have bad memories.

When we are not sure, we are alive.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

Beauty is like success: we can’t love it for long.

The only forever I have witnessed in my life is the relationship of love and goodbyes.

Don’t worry about your heart, it will last you as long as you live.

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.

This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.

How long can the flowers in my garden survive if the sun suddenly disappears?

Heartbreak wears me like it’s love.

We do not really know what we have lost until all that is left is the emptiness within us.

A heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved.