We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. - William Somerset Maugham

Why don’t you give up drinking?”

“Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he’s ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it’s the only thing I’ve got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.

If the future was so vague it meant perhaps that she was destined never to see it.

Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it.