Madonna in a Fur Coat (Penguin Modern Classics)

This intimacy came from thinking alike; in truth, it came from accepting one side of an idea while preparing to pay the price demanded by the other. But isn’t this how souls come together, by holding another’s every idea to be true and making it their own?

Just as warm sunlight can, by passing through a lens, turn to fire, so too can love. It’s wrong to see it as something that swoops in from outside. It’s because it arises from the feelings we carry inside us that it strikes us with such violence, at the moment we least expect.’

A soul only came forward when it found its twin, when it felt no need to rely on mere words to explain itself … It was only then that we truly began to live – live with our soul.

In the beginning it was curiosity that kept us talking. We were always looking for new things in each other. Over time, curiosity gave way to habit.

Although I was twenty-four years old, I had not yet freed myself of the naivety of youth. I had allowed myself to be possessed by a simple painting, which probably wasn’t even that good.

Would this ever happen, if they stopped believing in their dreams and made do with what was possible? If everyone accepted what was natural, then no one would suffer disappointment, no one would curse fate. We have every right to see our situation as pitiful, but we must confine our pity to ourselves. To pity another is to assume superiority

Why fret about a meaningless painting, a figment inspired by characters in books?

The essence of life is in solitude – wouldn’t you agree? All unions are built on falsehood. People can only get to know each other up to a point and then they make up the rest, until one day, seeing their mistake, they turn their backs on sadness and run away.

There is no woman as pitiful and ridiculous as a man swept away by his passions. At the same time they take huge pride in them, seeing them as proof of their virility.