Sándor Márai: "Esther's Inheritance"

"I did all I could to scape it.  But my foe pursued me.  Now I know he could do nothing  about it:  we are bound to our enemies, nor can they scape us." 

“I have started to think that the great, decisive moments that broadly govern our lives are far less conscious at the time than they seem later when we are reminiscing and taking stock.”

"That one day I received his telegram, which was like an opera libretto, just as theatrical, as dangerously childish and false, as everything he had written to others twenty years before... It was so much like a declaration, so full of promises, so clearly and transparent, false, false!" 

"Did he betray me?  No, I never felt betrayed by him.  Certainly he lied:  he lied the way the wind howls, with a certain natural energy, in high spirits.  He could tell the most wonderful lies. [...] He was always writing about the truth, about some imagined truth that he had just realized and urgently wanted me to know. [...] He took extraordinary care to bring this false-truth alive."

"Lajos was bringing back both the past and the timless experience of being alive.  I knew he had not changed.  [...]  I knew there was nothing we could do to defend ourselves.  But at the same time I knew that I still had no clue about life, about my own life and the lives of others, and it was only through Lajos that I could learn the truth - yes, through the liar Lajos."

"What did I want?  I would like to have been indifferent."