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”Truth is good, but love is better”
Alexandra Vladimirovna looked with some hostility, even fear, at this schoolgirl who could work out things she hadn’t yet worked out for herself

And as he drank his tea, thought about work, or gave a despairing sigh, Lyudmila would look at the eyes she had so often kissed, at the curly hair she had so often rumpled, at the lips that had kissed her, at the hands with small, delicate fingers whose nails she had so often cut, and say to herself: ‘Goodness me! What a sloven you are!’

They were all young and they were glad to be alive one more morning, to be able to lift up a tin mug and say, “Your good health!”, to be able to eat cabbage and smoke cigarettes…

For the thousandth time Krymov felt the pain of loneliness. Zhenya had left him...
Once again he thought how Zhenya's departure expressed the whole dynamic of his life. He remained, but there was nothing left of him; and she had gone. There were many harsh truths he had to admit to himself. Yes, he had been closing his eyes for too long...

Both his voice and eyes had the burning cold of alcohol. His strength no longer lay in his military experience or his knowledge of the map, but in his harsh, wild, impetuous soul.

No, what troubled Mostovskoy was that many things in his own soul were now foreign to him.
He could remember times when he had felt overjoyed at meeting an old friend— only to find that he was now a stranger. But what could he do now it was a part of himself that had become alien, that was out of place in the present day? He could hardly break with himself…

In the name of their ideals the Russian revolutionaries had gone to penal servitude and the scaffold; why then should they doubt that for a religious ideal a man might renounce intimacy with women? After all, it was hardly comparable to sacrificing one’s life.

The more difficult a man’s life had been before the camp, the more furiously he lied. This lie had no practical purpose; it served simply to glorify freedom. How could a man be unhappy outside the camp?

Meu amor You are sleeping, naked, in the first light ray of the morning, and I see your breast cut out against the light of the impalpable film of the door. Slowly, I put my hand on your belly. And I breathe, quietly and softly.

I say today, finally, that M. interests me. Or, what does a man mean when he says something like that about a woman? In general, that he is interested in sleeping with her. What am I saying? I say yes. I say it's true that I want to sleep with M. Necessarily because I'm a man and she's a woman? Not. Sandra is also a woman, and not a little, and she has never made the smallest fiber of my body boil.

I know that it is not good telling you in a letter what I am going to tell you. I thought about talking to you before coming here, but I didn't have the courage. And for eight days I keep telling myself that I will talk to you when I return to Lisbon, but I still won't have the courage. Not that I think you will be sad. Not that I feel that it would be more difficult for me than it always happens in such cases.

Next to Sandra, feeling her heavy breast and perhaps touching her leg, Carmo would have volunteered for the space flight, the first in history, if Gagarin had fallen ill at the last moment, and the Soviet Union had not had another astronaut available. There are many ways to make heroes and good people...

I was feeling too tired to try to understand. I stayed lying on the bed sheets, because I like to be naked and because I know that my body is not one of those that irremediably disturbs the space. Age has not yet destroyed everything.

In fact, between us, the only honest meeting place is the bed: neither I am a painter, nor is she a boutique owner. In terms of intelligence, that of the sexes would be enough, and they know what they are doing.

I left the Senatus Populusque Romanus and went home. I sat down in front of the empty easel, reading. I had deliberately searched for the writings of Leonardo da Vinci. And, from rule to rule, I have read what I had noticed so many times before: "Look carefully, painter, which is the ugliest part of your body and focus your studies on it to correct yourself...

Forgive me if I pain you, but all this is an utopia. Life is a battle between beasts, at any time and in any place. It's about "who can, save yourself” and that's it. Love is the preaching of the weak, hatred is the weapon of the strong. Love is only good for jokes or to give the strong ones an opportunity to enjoy the weaknesses of the weak.

Do not be scared. I just want to say that what each of us needs to be in life will not be achieved by the words he/she hears, by the advice he/she receives. The scar that transforms us into real people must remain on our skin. Then you have to do something...

He thought of reading a little before going to bed. It was early, barely half past ten, he still had plenty of time. But he didn't feel like reading. He didn't want to go out of doors either, even though the weather was stable, the sky without clouds, the temperature mild. He knew what he was going to see on the street: slow or hurried people, interested or indifferent. Dark houses, lighted houses.

She hesitated. The word she wanted to say was on her lips, but it was as if she had profaned it by saying it. Some words withdraw themselves, shun away-- because they mean too much for our word-weary hearing...

Besides the fact that I had my heart asleep, my body always remained cold, cold as marble... (Eca de Queiroz)

“It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.”

“And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.”

“I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.”

I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

“John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?”

Nonsense, my dear. You are overwrought, you see things in an exaggerated light. A little soap and water, if you will let me be so frank, a visit to the hairdresser and to the dressmaker, and you can return to the Palace Bellechasse without a scruple

No.

And why not?

I have changed my ideas. I do not think as I did.

Now, my dear Sophie, do not become a prig just because you have been a revolutionary.

Sophie, what a joy, what a relief!…My poor child, I never thought I should see you looking like this.

On the contrary, I think you should congratulate me that I have been through these last few days and retained not only my head, but my bonnet.

[…] I still do not quite understand by what provision you escaped.

Because I had been brought up as a lady.

Thank God! she exclaimed devoutly

Enfin! What will be, will be.
As though these time-worn words were a sort of music her body yielded, melted itself like the snake’s heavy coils beginning to shimmer with movement at the sound of the Indian’s flute. Leaning her cheek on her clasped hands she began to revolve about the room in a waltz, staring down at the floor, vaguely smiling…

Her happiness, blossoming in her so late and so defiantly, seemed of an immortal kind. One day, looking over a second-hand bookstall with Minna, she opened a snuffy volume that had English poems in it. Her eye fell on the verse:

My love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis of object strange and high,
It was begotten by despair
Upon impossibility.

For it is not true, Minna, that I have left Frederick and renounced my income because my sympathies are with the Revolution. I am here as I am because I saw a chance of being happy and took it. As for the Revolution, when I smacked my husband’s face and sent him to the devil, I never gave it a thought. Anyway I had done with Frederick long before. The smack was only a postscript..