Status Updates From Alexis Sorbas

“I could feel another leaf falling from my heart, the passing of another year.”

“Because God, you know, is a great lord, and that’s what being a lord means: to forgive!”

“Woman is a fresh spring. You lean over her, you see your reflection and you drink; you drink until your bones crack.”

“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”

“I've no time to lose. You're young, you can still afford to be patient. I can't. But I do declare, the older I get the wilder I become! Don't let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven! The longer I live, the more I rebel. I'm not going to give in; I want to conquer the world!"

This was for book club. Book club already met. The struggle is real.

"No, I don't believe in anything. If I believed in man, I'd believe in God, and I'd believe in the devil, too."

"You drink the red juice and, lo and behold, your soul grows big, too big for the old carcass, it challenges God to a fight. Now tell me, boss, how does it happen?"

"It's a mystery! Women have a wound which never heals. Every wound heals but that one—don't you take any notice of your books—that one never heals.
　What, just because a woman's eighty? The wound's still open."