Book: The Girl and the Night. Page 3

Of course, hiding your head in the sand is much easier. It's easy to live with your eyes closed, as the song goes.

The fast pace of time didn't scare me at all. I did not become discouraged when I celebrated my fortieth birthday and when my temples turned white. To be honest, I was even impatient to grow old, because it meant moving away from the past, which had nothing to do with Paradise Lost, but seemed to me the epicenter of the drama from which I had been running away all my life.

By nature, I am a loner who used to carry a book in his pocket, but never bothered to get a Facebook account. A kind of recluse, not very adapted to the era of the proponents of the like button.

The most mediocre novel is undoubtedly far more valuable than the criticism that mocks it.

Any novel - like any movie and any theatrical play - is often the fruit of many years of hard work, doubt and rethinking.

When you are sitting in a plane that is about to crash, there is no need to buckle up - it is useless.

There is no need to put on public display what is really dear to you, otherwise you become too vulnerable.

When you get a call from a hidden number at three o'clock in the morning, it usually does not bode well.

Most often, fate plays the role of a kind of purged, vicious beast, who, in the joy of breaking the life of the weak, while countless number of mindless scum live happily ever after.

Beauty is also a spiritual experience, a fragile force that you either use yourself or feel on yourself, God knows.

As far back as I can remember, I have always felt lonely, a little stranger in this noisy, everyday world, which struck like a contagious disease. At one time I tried to convince myself that books can get rid of a melancholy feeling of loneliness, but one cannot demand too much from books. They stuff them with different stories, as if by proxy they force them to live scraps of other people's lives, but they will never hug or console when it becomes scary.

Love is all or nothing.