Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. - James Salter

She could not eat, like a dog that has been sold.

He wanted one thing, the possibility of one thing: to be famous. He wanted to be central to the human family, why else is there to long for, to hope? …He had nothing. He had only the carefully laid out luggage of bourgeois life, his scalp beginning to show beneath the hair, his immaculate hands. And the knowledge; yes, he had knowledge…But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.

Beneath their brilliance women have a power as stars have gravity.