“Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.”

“Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money — the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse.”

“But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.”

“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”

“Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.”

“Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.”

“Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.”