“I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.”

“I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.”

“To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.”

“Some men," Flamel irresistibly added, "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on me almost as much as the students.”

“I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”

“They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.”

“I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.”