“When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.”

“When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”

“And the triviality faded from their faces, though it left something behind -- the knowledge that they could never be parted because their love was rooted in common things.”

“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. ”

“He would not deceive himself so much. He would not – and this was the test – pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.”

“Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged--well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in--to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed...”

“There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and, therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from him like birds.”