“When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.”

“I make the other’s absence responsible for my worldliness.”

“And death?
I don’t fear death.
I dread the absence of it.”

“The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.”

“What truly remains of me Is that very thing- my absence.”

“You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.”

“In the absence of a criminal code, a court might give a reprimand for a punch in the nose in Ryazan, while the sentence in Tula might be shooting.”

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”

“My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence.”

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”