“Maxim's voice, clear and strong, "Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.”

“If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.”

“My beloved Laura” (said she to me a few Hours before she died) “take warning from my unhappy End …Beware of fainting-fits…Beware of swoons, Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint—”.”

“She’s my wife. She goes where I go.”

“He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.”

“It's the clear headedness behind her voice and the calm reasonable expression in her eyes that rips my heart right out of my chest. She turns to leave and all I can do is let her go. I just let her go.”