Book: The secret history

- A quiet insistent voice in our head - why does it torment us so much? he asked and paused. - Maybe it reminds us that we are alive, that we are mortal, that each of us is endowed with a unique soul, which we are so afraid to part with, although it makes us feel more unhappy than all other creatures? Besides, what, if not pain, sharpens our sense of self? It is terrible when a child suddenly realizes that he is a being isolated from the whole world, that no one and nothing suffers when he burned his tongue or skinned his knee, that his pain belongs only to him alone. It is even worse when, with age, you begin to realize that no one, even the closest and beloved person, will ever be able to understand you for real. The ego makes us extremely unhappy, and is that why we are so eager to get rid of it?

The temptation to stop yourself, even for a brief moment, is very great.

All thoughts immediately responded with an unreasonable sense of danger and contradicted each other so much that I lost the ability to make any assumptions and was only stupidly amazed at what was happening.

In the suffocating smog of cigarettes and gloomy speculations, they flickered here and there, like allegorical figures from an old production or the ghosts of guests of a long-past tea-drinking in the garden.

He sailed through life, guided only by the dim lights of habits and stimuli, in full confidence that, having come across an obstacle on the way, he would easily overcome it by the force of inertia alone.

The dead appear to us in a dream, because our perception does not allow us to see them in reality. These night guests are images projected into our consciousness from an incredible distance, in a certain sense they can be likened to the light of a long extinct star ...

After all, if you think about it, what are ghosts? Particles and waves, radiation... The light of an extinct star.

She was no longer in the least like that carefree girl with whom I had once fallen in love, but that is why she was no less beautiful - a beauty that not so much aroused emotions as dominated my whole being.

The trouble is not that your Julian is focused only on some, sublime aspects of reality, but that he prefers to ignore all the others, which are no less important.

There is splendor in everything that has been done on a grand scale.

I think I can get us all out. True, success will depend on a certain set of circumstances, and you will have to wait for it. Also, to some extent, the question is about how far we are ultimately willing to go.

Bunny, since I know him, hasn't had a cent of pocket money. But there was always an irrealable thirst for luxury. An unfortunate combination, in my opinion.

For me, Camilla was a dream come true. One look at her awakened to life an almost limitless world of fantasy - from Hellenism to Gothic, from vulgar to sacred.

Always, always the same toast. Live forever.