“Often a man can play the helpless child in front of a woman, but he can almost never bring it off when he feels most like a helpless child.”

“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”

“Helplessness in the face of a child's suffering is the curse of parenthood.”

“A man may fight the greatest enemy, take the longest journey, survive the most grievous wound -- and still be helpless in the hands of the woman he loves.”

“His defences were all in his wits and cunning, his very instincts of cunning, and when these were abeyance he seemed doubly naked and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh, and somehow struggling helplessly”

“Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad.A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present.”