...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns … - Italo Calvino

"Among Chuang-tzu's many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun. "I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen. [Calvino retells this Chinese story]"

"Why d’you make me suffer?"
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. “No, no, you don’t love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!”
“People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.”
“Then you’re making people suffer on purpose.”
“Yes, to see if you love me.”
The Baron’s philosophy would not go any further. “Pain is a negative state of the soul.”
“Love is all.”
“Pain should always be fought against.”
“Love refuses nothing.”
“Some things I’ll never admit.”
“Oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer.

The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.