Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you’ve deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.
Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.
Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.
I’m interested in everything. I don’t see why Borges can’t work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can’t be mixed with Balzac. It’s just storytelling; it’s different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.
God gives us life, but the world’s landlord is the devil...
The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.
As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.
We exist as long as somebody remembers us.
In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.
It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.
Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act.
Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven.
The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.
It’s the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
Few things are more deceptive than memories.
With women, the best part is the discovery. There’s nothing like the first time, nothing. You don’t know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter’s night.
I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.
I prefer you like this, when you’re in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.
Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.
It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.