“I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.”

“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?”

“I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well." – Thomas Hudson”

“But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There's nothing you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it.”

“Oh Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick."No. I haven’t any anesthetic," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important."-Indian Camp-”

“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”

“We both touched wood on the cafe table and the waiter came to see what it was we wanted. But what we wanted he, nor anyone else, nor knocking on wood or on marble, as this cafe table-top was, could ever bring us. But we did not know it that night and we were very happy.”