For in any person there is a ball of bitterness and desire, sometimes just lightly tickling like a butterfly, but in many other cases utterly unbeara… - Doina Ruști

The agarwood gave off its perfume, and the vine oil clouded over, invaded by the ghosts of other lives, from the time when it was just a dry seed under heaps of limestone. The knife, the same knife that I had gripped in my hands without feeling its hidden power, that had sent Dubois to Marseille, sparked by the unseen veins that still bound it to Chelyabinsk, had begun to do its work.

The Ghost în the Mill

Generous people are praised in books, but in everyday life they have nothing to show for it. The more grasping a person is, the wider doors open for them. No one loves the generous! They are admired for their praiseworthy deeds, and if they give you something, you accept it gratefully. But that’s as far as it goes. You don’t waste your time with a giver. You don’t go for a drink with them. You don’t make a philosophy of their gesture. And you don’t include them in your list of friends. Such a person is only good as a guarantor—the one who’s ready to stump up.