Character: Richard Papen

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.

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.

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.

I believe that in the life of every person there is a certain critical period when the character is determined once and for all.

All my life, people have mistaken my shyness for gloom, snobbery, bad mood, and the like.

Women were sent billowing black skirts, held ready to fly hat. I noticed Camille - resisting wind, she trotted on tiptoe and tried to close pulling her umbrella. "Mary Poppins, error on takeoff", I thought.

True nature of the events opened to me with painful clarity. What all of this - the casket, ribbon, canopy - if we just leave him in the pit, throwing dirt and go home? Is that the point? To get rid of it, like from a garbage bag?

Exciting it's all the same to spread out the contents of the memory in chronological order.

After class I went down like a dream. Head was spinning, but I with painful acuteness felt that I was young and full of energy in front of me and opened its arms a beautiful day - unbearably blue sky, the wind is scattering yellow and red leaves handfuls of confetti.
"In the beauty of imprisoned horror. All that we call beautiful, makes us shiver".
That night I wrote in his diary: "the Trees are covered with schizophrenia and gradually lose their power over - their new blazing color drove them crazy. Someone, I think van Gogh said orange is the color of madness. Beauty is terror. We want to be swallowed up by it, I want to find refuge in its purifying flame".

My whole life was laid in those disparate periods of time that have been able to conduct in public places. It seemed to me that I wander around the station, and my train still no. And like one of those ghosts that late at night, ask the passengers, when does "Midnight Express", crashed about twenty years ago, I went from one waiting room to another until there came the terrible moment when he closed the last door. I left the cozy world of strangers and overheard a day of talks and appeared on the street where constant cold cut me to the bone. I immediately forgot what light, what warmth. Never, never will I be able to keep warm.

Whatever may be said about the sense of guilt, one thing is certain - it's devilishly inspired and encouraged imagination.

Amor vincit omnia - probably all would like to believe in the truth of that tired phrase. But if I've learned during my short sad life, it's that this truism lies. Love does not conquer all. And anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.