“Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor.”

“And this all causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, HOW FAR, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all.”

“the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”

“I guess that's the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.”

“The weight of his losses finally too much to bear.But not before he has known the unforgiving light of the equator, a love that exists only in his imagination, and the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”

“I learned that night that love is never as ferocious as when you think it is going to leave you. We are not always allowed this knowledge, and so our love sometimes becomes retrospective.”

“I wanted to lay down my cloak so that her feet might not be sullied by the dirty snow, but of course I could not - not only for the seeming excess of the gesture, which might have frightened away any sane woman, but also for a D shear impracticality of doing so at continuous intervals.”