Nancy Horan

“What did a person need to survive? Food. Water. Shelter. Warmth in cold weather. And something else... books.”

“I love you so much. I love you enough that I want to stay separate from you. You're an extraordinary man, Frank Wright. I could so easily lose myself in your world and never make a world of my own. And where would that leave us? We'd both be bored stupid.”

“How small we humans are. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.”

“Take my love for granted," he said, "and I shall do the same for you.”

“Don't you see what's happened? You wanted to be in love again. To feel that feeling where a man you hardly know gazes into your eyes and seems to be the only human being who ever understood the real you.”

“It's wonderful to feel desired. There's a sense of power in it, really.”

“It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else.”

“I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. -Loving Frank”

“Together greet life's solemn real.Together own one glad ideal,Together laugh, together ache,And think one thought- "Each other's sake,"And hope one hope- in new-world weather,To still go on, and go together.”

“It's not good to live so much inside oneself. It's a self-imposed exile, really. It makes you different.”

“We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.”

“I'm like the trunk of a cactus, I suppose." she told him. "I take in a dose of culture and time with friends, then I retreat and go live on it for a while until I get thirsty again.”

“As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror.”

“There's a phrase over the door; she called to him. "Haec est porta coeli."..."Here is the gate to heaven.”

“To fare on - fusing the self that wakes and the self that dreams.”