for a staggering, almost punishing memory that held up under the most liquid of late-night conditions.

For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.

But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less.

I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.

You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

Although the day was bathed in sorrow, there was a magical quality to the afternoon as it spilled into the evening

Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

This is what citizens of the sick country do while they are still hopelessly clinging to their old domicile.

As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited.