Sándor Márai

“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.”

“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.”

“She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood...”

“Is disinterest not the essence of every human relationship?”

“You only benefit from books if you can give something back to them. What I mean is, if you approach them in the spirit of a duel, so you can both wound and be wounded, so you are willing to...”