Status Updates From The Age of Reason

He had never been able to engage himself completely in any love-affair, or any pleasure, he had never been really unhappy; he always felt as though he were somewhere else, that he was not yet wholly born. He waited. And during all that time, gently, stealthily, the years had come, they had grasped him from behind;

in vain he repeated the once inspiring phrases: "I must be free. I must be self-impelled, and able to say: I am because I will; I am my own begin-ning?" Empty, pompous words, the commonplaces of the intellectual.

he had said to himself: "I will be free," or rather he hadn't said anything at all, but that was what he wanted to say and it was in the nature of a bet; he had made a bet with himself that his whole life should be cast in the semblance of that unique moment.

I'm getting old. Here I am, lounging in a chair, committed to my present life right up to the ears and believing in nothing. And yet I also wanted to set out for a Spain of mine. But it couldn't be fixed. Are there many Spains?
I am there, absorbing the ancient taste of blood and iron-tainted water; I am my own taste, I exist. That's what existence means: draining one's own self dry without the sense of thirst.

"Friendship doesn't exist to criticize," Brunet used to say then. "Its function is to inspire confidence."