“He was so rapt in his thoughts that he did not hear anything much that Guido was saying, that lovely bubbling speech of Guido's when he was at last content.Tonio allowed it to pass over him, and now and then he would give a little gracious nod.”

“Desire radiated from him. It radiated out into the darkness and seemed to find the four walls of this enclosing place, and he turned around waiting, waiting."Love you?" came Guido's voice. It was so low Tonio strained forward, as if yearning for it. "Love you?"Yes..."Tonio answered."I am in a hell of desire for you! Have you never guessed? Have you never looked beneath the coldness? Are you so blind to this suffering? In all my life I have never wooed and suffered as I have over you. But there is love and love, and I am spent trying to separate the one from the other...""Dont' separate them!" Tonio whispered. And he reached out like a child, grasping for what he wanted. "Give it to me! Where are you? Maestro, where are you?"There seemed a rush of air, a soft shuffling of garments and steps, and he felt the near smarting touch of Guido's hands hands that in the past had only struck him, and then those arms enclosing him. And in this moment, he understood everything. But that was but the last glimmer of thought, and he knew just how it had been and how it would be, and he felt Guido's chest, and then Guido's mouth tore at him.”

“Well, from now on, she would never complain when he got so engrossed in his laptop that he failed to hear anything that she was saying.”

“Would age now swiftly overtake him? Would this terrible nodding last now for all his days, so that men said aloud in his presence, it is nothing, he is old and does nothing but forget? And would he nod as though he too were saying, Yes, it is nothing, I am old and do nothing but forget? But who would know that he said, I do nothing but remember?”

“There were times when [he] allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say, his conscious thinking life, in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man's thoughts, all his work another man's work. And then he thought it did not perhaps matter so greatly... It was a pleasant subordination, if he was a subordinate.”

“Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and an be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face.”