The memory of the aged becomes clearer and clearer with time. It has no pity.

The inspector sat down on a stair, fired up a cigarette, and entered an immobility contest with a lizard.

Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight.

Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.