“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”

“Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.”

“These lights, this brightness, these clusters of human hope, of wild desire—I shall take these lights in my fingers. I shall make them bright, and whether they shine or not, it is in these fingers that they shall succeed or fail.”

“If he had to bring all the bitterness and hatred of the world into his heart, he was not going to be in love with her again.”

“You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me.”

“he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.”

“Another dawn flung itself across the river; a belated taxi hurried along the street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face white from a nights' carouse.”