He had instinctively fled to Gare Saint-Lazare because he had nowhere to go, and people with nowhere to go always end up at stations.

People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs.

Nature's a funny old thing, it does whatever it pleases. He had always been a little afraid of it. He tiptoed into forests, speaking in a whisper, as though entering a church. Nature was mysterious, incomprehensible, impenetrable, off limits, like the ladies' toilets.

[T]he stars carried on calmly grazing on nothingness.

Nadine found herself standing in front of a row of streaming faces, like waxworks of forgotten celebrities being melted down before coming back as more contemporary figures.

. . . a shrunken old man, squashed into the chair like a stubbed-out cigarette.

People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs

They had nothing in common except for existing in the same time and space