There was not much one could do; he decided at least to be good.
Human love can be only a pale reflection of the emotion that God must feel for what He has created.
There is a time in life when a man with a little acting ability is able to deceive even himself.
The possession of a body tonight seemed a very small thing-perhaps that day I had seen too many bodies which belonged to no one, not even to themselves. We were all expendable.
I have no belief in luck. I am not superstitious, but it is impossible, when you have reached forty and are conspicuously unsuccessful, not sometimes to half-believe in a malign providence.
There is not so much virginity in the world that one can afford not to love it when on finds it.
As one grows old I think one becomes more attached to family things- to houses and graves.
He disapproved, he didn’t believe in girls drinking, he was full of the conventions of a generation older than himself. Of course one drank oneself, one fornicated, but one didn’t lie with a friend’s sister, and ‘decent’ girls were never squiffy.
I like to change my clothes as little as possible. I suppose some people would say the same of my ideas, the bank had taught me to be wary of whims.
From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it.
Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying.
Once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers – if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest’s woman. He alone carried a wound, as though a whole world had died.
He watched her go out of the dark office like fifteen wasted years.
As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas.
With goodness one can feel secure; why wasn’t I satisfied with goodness, why did I always ask her the wrong questions?
A frigid woman is never jealous, you simply haven’t caught up yet on ordinary human emotions.
What’s the good? he’ll always be innocent, you can’t blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
I could have hated him for saying it: it was like a claim. If you really loved me, I thought, you’d behave like any other injured husband. You’d get angry and your anger would set me free.
Why did you give Querry Deo Gratias?’ ‘He’s cured, but he’s a burnt-out case, and I don’t want to send him away. He can sweep a floor and make a bed without fingers or toes.’ ‘Our visitors are sometimes fastidious.’ ‘I assure you Querry doesn’t mind. In fact he asked for him.
Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy.