“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”

“Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.”

“The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.”

“She tasted for the first time honey-sweet and dangerous happiness: dangerous because, as she before long began to learn, precarious.”

“Your best friends are in trouble and you say 'of course' and forget them instantly.”

“Perhaps it was a case of time overflowing.”

“Perhaps one could not live with such knowledge. One might die for it, or of it.”

“Happiness. What's that? I don't know. How can one be happy when one loves a demon?”

“Ludens felt again that special curious anguish caused by glimpses of a happiness he would have felt if only things were different — which could be different, perhaps could easily be differen...”