"Astonished, I asked myself: “Where is the present?”"
"Now I was only time flowing through myself."
"We were burning up a capital of desire. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time."
"(The same would have applied to me in the case of obscene words belonging to his language.)"
"Quite often I felt I was living out this passion in the same way I would have written a book: the same determination to get every single scene right, the same minute attention to detail. I could even accept the thought of dying providing I had lived this passion through to the very end—without actua"
"I tried not to betray my obsession by words, although to exercise such self-control continually is extremely taxing."
"Those conversations, when I had continually responded to the other person by saying “me too, it’s the same for me, I did that too,” suddenly seemed futile, removed from the reality of my own passion. Rather, something was lost through these outbursts."