“But it was more than that. There was an indefinable ingredient, a kind of excitement. It had something to do with history and the past, that excitement, and something to do with potential as well, with what Orwell or somebody had said. that every man really knew in his heart the finest place to be was the countryside on a summer's day. I was happy, that's what it was.”

“A disturbing experience it had been, exciting and confusing.”

“Evil was a stupid word. It had the same sort of sense, largely meaningless, amorphous, diffuse, wooly, as applied to "love." Everyone had a vague idea of what it meant but none could precisely have defined it. It seemed, in a way, to imply something supernatural.”

“Time, the best of all doctors, though it kills you in the end, had done more than therapy could.”

“Isak Dinesen said that life is no more than a process for turning healthy young puppies into mangy old dogs and man but an exquisite instrument for converting the red wine of Shiraz into urine.”

“Love is about allowing. Love is about letting people be free. You leave the cage door open and if you're really loved, the bird flies back to be with you. That's the only kind of love worth having.”

“Lewis would have agreed with Oscar Wilde that our past is what we are. We cannot rid ourselves of it.”