“And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all.”

“A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.”

“Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.”

“A gentleman might have stopped then. She had climaxed, and she was still a virgin, and he was probably a beast for wanting to make love to her fully, but he simply couldn't...not.She was his.But not, he was coming to realize, quite as much as he was hers.”

“There is no reciprocity. Men love women. Women love children. Children love hamsters. Hamsters don't love anyone; it is quite hopeless.”

“They are hopelessly vulgar. Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life that is quite enough.”