Οι κιβδηλοποιοί

Η ανακούφιση όταν μαθαίνεις πως δεν είσαι παιδί τους

Owing to an accidental discovery I happened to make this afternoon, I have become aware that I must cease to regard you as my father. This is an immense relief to me. Realizing as I do how little affection I feel for you, I have for a long time past been thinking myself an unnatural son; I prefer knowing I am not your son at all.

Η στιγμή που η βάρκα της διάσωσης γίνεται σύνορο.

The recollection which remains most vividly with me and which nothing will ever efface from my mind and my heart is this.—There were about forty or so of us in the boat, all crowded together, for a number of swimmers had been picked up at the last gasp like me. The water was almost on a level with the edge of the boat. I was in the stern and I was holding the little girl I had just saved tightly pressed against me to warm her—and to prevent her from seeing what I couldn’t help seeing myself—two sailors, one armed with a hatchet and the other with a kitchen chopper. And what do you think they were doing? … They were hacking off the fingers and hands of the swimmers who were trying to get into our boat.

Το είδωλο που παντρεύεσαι δεν είναι ο άνθρωπος που ζεις μαζί του

What an admirable subject for a novel—the progressive and reciprocal decrystallization of a husband and wife after fifteen or twenty years of married life. So long as he loves and desires to be loved, the lover cannot show himself as he really is, and moreover he does not see the beloved—but instead, an idol whom he decks out, a divinity whom he creates.