Сломленная

I am so faithful to the past that the least forgetfulness seems a crime and one has a feeling of guilt if one changes a taste or an opinion.

She has preserved the eagerness of our teen-age days, when every film, every book, every picture was so immensely important.

The air is polluted not only because of the cars and the factories but also these millions of filthy mouths swallowing it in and belching it out from morning till night.

It’s one of those cases in which old age is a happy period—old age after a hard life, one that has been more or less eaten up by others.

Neither music nor words could do anything for me. Formerly I had looked to them for stimulus or relaxation. Now they were no more than a diversion whose irrelevance sickened me.

This sluggishness of the heart is called indulgence and wisdom: in fact it is death settling down within you.

Once I used to cherish schemes and promises for the future; now my feelings and my joys are smoothed and softened with the shadowy velvet of time past.

Reflections, echoes, reverberating back and back to infinity: I have discovered the pleasure of having a long past behind me.

В действительности — я безоружна, ибо никогда не предполагала, что имею права. Я многого жду от людей, которых люблю, — быть может, слишком многого. Я жду, даже прошу. Но требовать я не умею.