She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present - she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.

Yesterday I went home with him and we did the usual things. I haven't the nerve to put them down, but I'd like to, because now when I'm writing it's already tomorrow and I'm afraid of getting to the end of yesterday. As long as I go on writing, yesterday is today and we are still together

What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom.

Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.

The thought of retirement set his nerves twitching and straining: he always prayed that death would come first.

The place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love, it stank to heaven; but he realized that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short.

Fear is easily experienced, but fun is hard to come by in old age, so I already felt a sense of gratitude to General Omar Torrijos.

You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us... But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever.

She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present—she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.

She dabbed at her eyes. 'You'd be bored, Henry. An unfinished bottle of champagne found in an old cupboard with all the sparkle gone …' The jaded phrase was worthy of a Haymarket author.

They are descriptions of what real life looks like, not prescriptions for how to get life.