And whenever I saw Luis, Graça's husband, I dealt with him with a friendship that was quite genuine, since it… — V. S. Naipaul

Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end, life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

I could scarcely bear to look at her eyes. They promised such intimacies.

Before comfort had been squeezed out of the hard land, like blood out of stone.