In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.

I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.

The usual for me." The usual was a strong infusion of different kinds of Oriental teas, which raised her spirits after her siesta.

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.