Beer in the Snooker Club

by Waguih Ghali

What do people who do not drink do on such occasions? Face the facts perhaps. But facing a fact is one thing, and overcoming it is another.

‘At one time or another every married man has thought of divorce.’

‘I lose all individuality. I agree with everything they say. I act and say whatever they expect of me; I end up by having no thoughts of my own. It would be an act of suicide from my part.’

No matter how many times I go to the Pyramids at night, I am always awed, and the return journey is made in silence.

To be loved by, and to possess the person we love is why we were born.

A woman will never fall in love with a man who does not dominate her, however slightly.

It is all right for people to pretend that love breeds love, but it is not so. The seed of love is indifference.

I was getting bored and now that I had started to cleave into two, one half had started telling the other the truth.

‘I’ve fed that girl books the way a mother does her child milk. Spoons and shovels full of books.

But I can never hit someone unless I am angry.

‘You know why you are despicable?’ I told him. ‘It’s because you can fight and kill people without being angry. I’m unable to hit you back simply because I feel no anger towards you.’

There is only one perfect ending to everything, and that is death, but there are other good endings as well.

I learnt at that moment that when a situation is very real and true, all this business of splitting into two and watching oneself act, is far away and dead and non-existent.

One only realizes the extent of his love when he thinks he has lost the one he loves; and unhappily, very often only begins to love when he feels his love is not returned.

The sense of smell is much more a retainer of things past than is the sense of hearing or of sight.

I saw her bullied by nationalities and races and political events and revolutions and dictatorships and particularly by her own vague idealism. I held her tenderly in my arms and also saw my own shallowness and unworthiness in contrast to her deepness and sincerity.

No amount of talking or explaining will really bring two lovers or two friends closer than they can be in silence.

‘If,’ I told Edna, ‘someone has read an enormous amount of literature, and has a thorough knowledge of contemporary history, from the beginning of this century to the present day, and he has an imagination, and he is intelligent, and he is just, and he is kind, and he cares about other people of all races, and he has enough time to think, and he is honest and sincere, there are two things can happen to him; he can join the Communist Party and then leave it, wallowing in its short-comings,

‘it’s stupid living under a police state without the benefits of the control.’

If we are to live under a dictatorship, it should be a communist one.