“I felt ravaged, and with both hands in a fantasy I reached out for her figure as we ran together through the meadow which belonged only to us and to which these others could never be admitted."Oh, inocent love," she said even as she drank from me, "oh, innocent innocent love.”

“Oh, but when love is reached through suffering, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.”

“...I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. ...And perhaps we are responsible even for the love we feel for our parents.”

“It's part of us," she said jerkily. "How could I not want part of us? It's your baby.I'm carrying your baby and I love it so much already it terrifies me.""Oh,Diana." He touched her then, gently, his hands on her face. "You've let two weeks go by when we could have been terrified together.”

“After confessing her love, she ran from me. I wanted to stop her but I let her go. If she really loved me how could she leave?#Ren”

“She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centered love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love.”