“There is no end to the story. Isn’t it amazing that something is really, really important one moment, and then minutes later it has lost all importance? What happened? It seems like it’s gone away. It’s been diffused. Amazing.”

“You see? I don’t know what ‘mature’ means, either, and you could talk all night and I still wouldn’t know. It’s all just words to me, Frank. I watch you talking and I think: Isn’t that amazing? He really does think that way; these words really do mean something to him. Sometimes it seems I’ve been watching people talk and thinking that all my life. And maybe it means there’s something awful the matter with me, but it’s true.”

“We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing’s certain, though: if we throw it away, it’s gone.”

“The London season is like one of those Drury Lane melodramas in which marriage is always the ending. And no one ever seems to give any thought as to what happens after. But marriage isn’t the end of the story it’s the beginning. And it demands the efforts of both partners to make a success of it.”

“Paper isn’t important. It’s the words on them that are important.”

“What a man knows isn’t important. It’s what he is that counts”