Dear Henry,

{…}

“You destroy and you suffer… I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.

In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you.

And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate.

When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magical forces of the world.

I want to both combat you and submit to you, because as a woman I adore your courage, I adore the pain it engenders, I adore the struggle you carry in yourself, which I alone fully realize, I adore your terrifying sincerity. I adore your strength.

You are right. The world is to be caricatured, but I know, too, how much you can love what you caricature. How much passion there is in you! It is that I feel in you. I do not feel the savant, the revealer, the observer. When I am with you, it is the blood I sense.

{…}

Henry writes back:

“Anaïs, I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late.

You numb me. {…} This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself ‘here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.’ I remember your saying – ‘you could fool me, I wouldn’t know it.’ When I walk along the boulevards and think of that. I can’t fool you—and yet I would like to.

I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal—it’s not in me. I love women, or life, too much—which it is, I don’t know. But laugh, Anaïs, I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance—no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. {…}

I don’t know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you—even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.”

Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.

“Sir," she said, "you are no gentleman!"
An apt observation,"he answered airily."And, you, Miss, are no lady.”

Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears. 

Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.

You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.

Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.

And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. ...Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love...

I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost.

No, my dear, I'm not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I'd ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You'd break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn't even trouble to sheathe her claws.

I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can't... My dear, I don't give a damn.

I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

“He who wants to be born must destroy a world.”

“I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly. ”

 “The realization that my problem was one that concerned all men, a problem of living and thinking, suddenly swept over me and I was overwhelmed by fear and respect as I suddenly saw and felt how deeply my own personal life and opinions were immersed in the eternal stream of great ideas. Though it offered some confirmation and gratification, the realization was not really a joyful one. It was hard and had a harsh taste because it implied responsibility and no longer being allowed to be a child; it meant standing on one’s own feet.”

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

 “I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”

“I was only trying to live my life in accordance with the principles which sprang from my own true self. Why was that so very difficult? ”

  “The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”

“We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere.”

“Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.”

“At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.”

“Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.”

“Each of us has to find out for ourselves what is permitted and what is forbidden--forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa.”

“Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak surrender to them, don't ask first whether it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. ”

“One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time. ”

“Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.”

“I like listening to music, but only the kind you play, absolute music, the kind that makes you feel that someone is rattling at the doors if heaven and hell. I like music very much, I think, because it's so unconcerned with morality.”

It is some ten months since I put down anything in my journal; it had

become such a familiar friend that I missed it. But I said to myself:

what is the use of it? If I put down on paper thoughts worthy of a

Pascal; deeper than the ocean depth; loftier than the Alps,--it would

not change the simple fact that she is married. With that fact staring

at me, my hands dropped powerless. Sometimes life concentrates itself

in one object, not necessarily an important one; but if that fails us

we seem at a loss what to do with ourselves. It is strange,--almost

laughable,--but for a long time I remained in a state of mind in which

the most commonplace functions of life seemed irksome and useless,

and it took me some time to remember that I used to go to clubs and

theatres, shaved, dressed, and dined before I knew her.

This is a special kind of armor which not only protects the man

himself, but also makes him dangerous to others. It is clear that

he who does not spare himself will not spare others.

I read once, in Amiel's memoirs, that the deed is only the

crystallized matter of thought. But thoughts may remain in the

abstract,--not so feelings.

My jealousy would be a miserable thing if it were not at the same time

the pain of the true believer who sees his divinity dragged in the

dust. I would abstain even from touching her hand if I could place her 

on some inapproachable height where nobody could come near her.

The human soul, like the bee, extracts sweetness even from bitter

herbs. The most unhappy wretch still tries to squeeze out a little

happiness from his woes, and the merest shadow and pretext will serve

his turn. Sometimes I think that this intense longing for happiness is

one proof more that happiness is awaiting us in another world.

I have a crippled heart, but it is capable of love.

When I come to think that all is at an end between us, and that I have

left her forever, I can scarcely believe it. There is no Aniela for me

any more. Then what is there? Nothing. Then why do I live? I do not

know.

The thought still pursues me that as a rule human tragedy is the

outcome of exceptional events and calamities, and mine comes from a

natural event. Really I do not know which is worst. The natural order

of things seems to me past bearing.

I have heard that a man struck by lightning stiffens, but does not

fall down at once. I too keep up, sustained by that thunderbolt that

struck me, but I feel myself falling. As soon as it grows dark in the

evening something strange takes place within me. I feel so oppressed

that it costs me an effort even to sigh; it seems as if the air could

not get to my lungs, and that I breathe with only a part of them.

During the night, and also in the day, a sudden nameless terror seizes

me,--terror of nothing in particular. I feel as if something horrible

was going to happen, something worse than death. Yesterday I put the

question to myself: "What would become of me if, in this foreign town,

I suddenly forgot my name and where I lived, and wandered on and on in

darkness without knowing where I was going?"

Aniela died this morning.

I might have been your happiness, and became your misfortune. I am the

cause of your death, for if I had been a different man, if I had not

been wanting in all principles, all foundations of life, there would

not have come upon you the shocks that killed you. I understood that

in the last moments of your life, and I promised myself I would follow

you. I vowed it at your dying bed, and my only duty is now near you.

To your mother I leave my fortune; my aunt I leave to Christ, in whose

love she will find consolation in her declining years, and I follow

you--because I must. Do you think I am not afraid of death? I am

afraid because I do not know what there is, and see only darkness

without end; which makes me recoil. I do not know whether there

be nothingness, or existence without space and time; perhaps some

midplanetary wind carries the spiritual monad from star to star to

implant it in an ever-renewing existence. I do not know whether there

be immense restlessness, or a peace so perfect as only Omnipotence and

Love can bestow on us. But since you have died through my "I do not

know," how could I remain here--and live?

The more I fear, the more I do not know,--the more I cannot let you go

alone; I cannot, Aniela mine,--and I follow. Together we shall sink

into nothingness, or together begin a new life; and here below where

we have suffered let us be buried in oblivion.

There is something in us,--an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has

given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the bow 

and send the arrow straight to its aim. 

 It is obvious that under such influences my mind became that of a civilized being,

 that can make due allowance for other people's opinions; I do not utter peacock cries 

when I hear of anything opposed to my views or something utterly new. It may be that such leniency

 and tolerance of all opinions leads finally to indifferentism and weakens

 the active principle in the human mind, but I could not be different now.

And now it will be easier to describe the state of my mind. 

It all lies in these words: I do not know.

 In this--in the acknowledged impotence of the human mind--lies the tragedy. 

Not to mention the fact that humanity always has asked, and always will ask, for an answer,

 they are truly questions of more importance than anything else in the world.

 If there be something on the other side, and that something an eternal life, 

then misfortunes and losses on this side are as nothing.

Philosophy, I am struck by your common sense, admire your close analysis; 

but with all that, you have made me supremely wretched. By your own confession

 you have no answer for a question, to me of the greatest importance, and yet

you had power enough to destroy that faith which not only cleared up all doubts, 

but soothed and comforted the soul. And do not say that, since you do not lay down the law, 

you permit me to adhere to my old beliefs. It is not true! 

Your method, your soul, your very essence is doubt and criticism.

 This, your scientific method, this scepticism, this criticism you have implanted in the soul

 till they have become a second nature. As with lunar caustic, you have deadened the spiritual

nerves by the help of which one believes simply and without question, 

so that even if I would believe I have lost the power. 

You permit me to go to church if I like; but you have poisoned me with scepticism to such a degree 

that I have grown sceptical even with regard to you,--sceptical in regard to my own scepticism;

 and I do not know, I do not know. I torture myself, and am maddened by the darkness.

Life carries me along, and although in the main I know what to think of its hollow pleasures, 

I give myself up to it altogether, and then the moral "to be, or not to be" has no meaning for me.

Tenderness grows on the soil of attraction by the senses, as quick as flowers after a warm rain.

The human being, like the sea, has his ebb and flood tides. To-day my will, my energy, 

the very action of life are at a very low tide. It came upon me without warning, a mere matter of nerves.

Have I a right to marry her,--to link that fresh budding life, full of simple faith in God and the world,

 to my doubts, my spiritual impotence, my hopeless scepticism, my criticism and nerves?

 What will be the result of it for her? I cannot regain another spiritual youth, 

and even at her side cannot find my old self; my brains cannot change, 

or my nerves grow more vigorous,--and what then? Is she to wither at my side?

 It would be simply monstrous. I to play the part of a polypus that sucks the life-blood

 of its victims in order to renew its own life! A heavy cloud weighs on my brain.

 But if such be the case why did I allow it to go so far?

 What have I been doing ever since I met Aniela? 

Playing on her very heartstrings to bring forth sweet music. 

And yet, what for me was "Quasi una fantasia" may prove to her "Quasi un dolore."

Yes, I have played on that sensitive instrument from morning until night; 

and what is more, I feel that in spite of my self-upbraidings, I shall do the same 

to-morrow and the days following, for I cannot help it; she attracts me more than any woman I ever met, 

I desire her above all things--I love her!

Why delude myself any longer?--I love her.

I feel like a man who shuts his eyes and ears before taking the final plunge. 

But I really think it is a costly pearl I shall find at the bottom of the deep.

Mountains, towers, rocks, the further they recede from our view, 

appear as a mere outline through a veil of blue haze. 

There is a kind of psychical blue haze that enfolds those who are removed from us.

Death itself is a removal, but the chasm is so wide that the beloved ones who have crossed it 

disappear within the haze and become as beloved shadows. 

The Greek genius understood this when he peopled the Elysian fields with shadows.

Death is such a gulf, and though we know that all have to go thither,

yet when it swallows up one of our dear ones, we who remain on the brink are torn with fear, 

sorrow, and despair. On that brink all reasoning leaves us, and we only cry out for help 

which cannot come from anywhere. The only solace and comfort lies in faith, 

but he who is deprived of that light gets well-nigh maddened by the impenetrable darkness.

To-day I thought a great deal about Aniela. I have a strange feeling, as if lands and seas divided us. 

It seems to me as if Ploszow were a Hyperborean island somewhere 

at the confines of the world. We have delusions of that kind when personal impression 

takes the place of tangible reality. It is not Aniela who is far from me, 

it is I who go farther and farther away from the Leon whose heart and thoughts were once so full of her.

The house of cards has tumbled down. I received a letter from my aunt. 

Aniela is engaged to Kromitzki, and the marriage will take place in a few weeks.

Even though God did not exist, Religion would be none the less holy and divine.

God is the sole being who has no need to exist in order to reign.

That which is created by the Mind is more living than Matter.

I believe I have already set down in my notes that Love greatly resembles an application of torture or a surgical operation. But this idea can be developed, and in the most ironic manner. For even when two lovers love passionately and are full of mutual desire, one of the two will always be cooler or less self-abandoned than the other. He or she is the surgeon or executioner; the other, the patient or victim.

Music excavates Heaven.

Life has but one true charm: the charm of gambling. But what if we are indifferent to gain or loss?

Nations like families only produce great men in spite of themselves. They make every effort not to produce them. And thus the great man has need, if he is to exist, of a power of attack greater than the power of resistance developed by several millions of individuals.

There are some skins as hard as tortoise shell against which scorn has no power.

Are there mathematical lunacies and madmen who believe that two and two make three? In other words, can hallucination invade the realms of pure reason if the words do not cry out (at being joined together)? If, when a man has fallen into habits of idleness, of day-dreaming and of sloth, putting off his most important duties continually till the morrow, another man were to wake him up one morning with heavy blows of a whip and were to whip him unmercifully, until he who was unable to work for pleasure worked now for fear — would not that man, the chastiser, be his benefactor and truest friend?

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity, that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

People tell me that I am thirty, but if I have lived three minutes in one . . . am I not ninety years old?

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” 

“There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.” 

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” 

 “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before - more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” 

“I'll tell you...what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to someone who smites it.” 

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!” 

 “I am what you designed me to be. I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt.” 

 “Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.” 

“But you said to me,’ returned Estella, very earnestly, ‘God bless you, God forgive you!’ And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now - now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends.’ ‘We are friends,’ said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench. ‘And will continue friends apart,’ said Estella. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.“

“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”

“I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. ”

 “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”

“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”

 “Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.”

“To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” 

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.” 

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.” 

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.” 

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet, I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.” 

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.” 

“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”

“It is better to burn than to disappear.”

“The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”

“For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.” 

    “But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if
evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows
disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.
Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because
of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”

“The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.”

    “You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman...
'You never can tell...' he answered.
'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly.
'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal!”