“…just a whiff of the brisk night air and it’ll all come back to me: I’m wasting my life, I am so alone. A rush of tenderness fills my heart. But I’m not fooled. Tenderness is shame love, easy love, the muted, civil face of love.”

“Sometimes on those evenings I’ll put off going home. Why go home? To face what? I prefer to linger on the sidewalks and make up reasons to walk to the next bus stop, and to the next one after that. Or I’ll step into this or that store and forget work, forget everyone, and let myself sink deeper, because I want to suffer, I want to hurt, I want to feel something, even I know that thinking of you never lasts long enough, and that swept by scent of a large store, my mind will invariably drift to other things, other faces, and in the crowd I’ll lose you and won’t remember your face.”

Enigma Variations, André Aciman