“And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough -- you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me -- be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.”

“Matthew,' she said, 'have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?'For a moment he did not answer.  Taking up the decanter he held it to the light.'Robin can go anywhere, do anything,' Nora continued, 'because she forgets, and I nowhere because I remember.'  She came toward him.  'Matthew,' she said, 'you think I have always been like this.  Once I was remorseless, but this is another love — it goes everywhere; there is no place for it to stop — it rots me away.”

“I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.”

“I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.”

“God,' she cried, 'what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you prepare for that? Everything we can't bear in the world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.... There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purty's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?”

“For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short; for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.”

“The doctor lifted the bottle. “Thank you,” said Felix. “I never drink spirits.”“You will,” said the doctor.”