“I desired none but her; I wanted none but her. Nothing any longer existed outside or beyond her. Instead of extinguishing the fire of my love, every day possession fanned its flame. I descended further into the burning gulf of her desire each time, and every day I realised more strongly that my entire life would be exhausted seeking to reach its bottom!” LoveDesire Book:The Torture Garden Source: The Torture Garden
“How could I accept the fact that, after having been conquered— soul, body and brain—by this irrevocable, indissoluble and martyrizing love, I would have to immediately give it up? Madness! This love was a part of me, like my own flesh; it had taken the place of my blood and marrow; it possessed me entirely; it was I! To separate me from it meant to separate me from myself; it meant to kill me. Worse still! It meant the extravagant nightmare that my head was in Ceylon, my feet in China, separated by abysses of ocean, and that I would continue to live in these two stumps which could never be reunited!” LoveDesire Book:The Torture Garden Source: The Torture Garden
“That the very next day I would no longer possess those swooning eyes, those devouring lips, the nightly renewed miracle of that body with its divine contours and savage embraces; and, after long spasms as powerful as sin and as deep as death, that naive stammering, those little laughs, those little tears, those languid little songs of a child or a bird—was it possible! And I would lose all that was more necessary for breathing than my lungs; more necessary for thinking than my brain; more necessary for nourishing my veins with warm blood than my heart! Impossible! I belonged to Clara like the coal belongs to the fire which devours and consumes it. Both to her and me, a separation had seemed so inconceivable and so insanely fantastic, so totally contrary to the laws of nature and life, that we had never spoken of it.” LoveDeathDesire Book:The Torture Garden Source: The Torture Garden
