I have started to think that the great, decisive moments that broadly govern our lives are far less conscious at the time than they seem later when we are reminiscing and taking stock.

London is a huge, stony desert: even boredom feels endless there.

Time is a purgatory that has cleansed all fury from my memories.

Is disinterest not the essence of every human relationship?

We all of us must come to terms with what and who we are, and recognize that this wisdom is not going to earn us any praise, that life is not going to pin a medal on us for recognizing and enduring our own vanity or egoism or baldness or our potbelly.

It is not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life.

Whether life finds us guilty or not guilty, we ourselves know we are not innocent.

And yet, sometimes facts are no more than pitiful consequences, because guilt does not reside in our acts but in the intentions that give rise to our act. Everything turns on our intentions.

One has to endure betrayal and disloyalty and, hardest of all , another person's excellence of character or intellect