The Post-Office Girl

Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.

The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.

In the end one needs forbearance to get by in this world.

No one would ever believe how hard it is to be really alone in a city of millions when you don't have money.

Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.

All office workers are afraid of being late for work.

Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it's gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.

He looked at her again, now with the vague abject shyness that older men often have with young women, as though asking their indulgence for no longer being young.

There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.

There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.

The dressmaker doesn't have problems unless the dress has to hide rather than reveal.

Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.

Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.

Someone who's on top of the world isn't much of an observer: happy people are poor psychologists. But someone who's troubled about something is on the alert. The perceived threat sharpens his senses - he takes in more than he usually does.

The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it.

The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.

Malice is always lucky.

Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.

You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it. I know the way women look down on you when you're down at heels. I know it's embarrassing for other people, but the hell with that, it's a lot more embarrassing when it's you. You can't get out of it, you can't get past it, the best thing to do is get plastered, and here" (he reached for his glass and drained it in a deliberately uncouth gulp) "here's the great social problem, here's why the 'lower classes' indulge in alcohol so much more - that problem that countesses and matrons in women's groups rack their brains over at tea. For those few minutes, those few hours, you forget you're an affront to other and to yourself. It's no great distinction to be seen in the company of someone dressed lie this, I know, but it's no fun for me either.

Nothing makes you madder than wanting to defend yourself against something you can't even get hold of, something the human race is doing to you, but still there's nobody you can grab by the throat.

Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.