“willow trees, willow trees they remind me of DesdemonaI'm so damned literaryand at the same time the waters rushing past remindme of nothing”

“Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie underthem, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.”

“Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?”

“it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as stillas solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of itin the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forthbetween each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles”

“If I am ever to find these trees meaningfulI must have you by the hand. As it is, theystretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky,and the snow looks up like a face dirtiedwith tears. Should I cry out and see what happens?There could only be a stranger wanderingin this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himselffrozen fast in wintry eyes.”

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”

“Now I am quietly waiting forthe catastrophe of my personalityto seem beautiful again,and interesting, and modern.The country is grey andbrown and white in trees,snows and skies of laughteralways diminishing, less funnynot just darker, not just grey.It may be the coldest day ofthe year, what does he think ofthat? I mean, what do I? And if I do,perhaps I am myself again.”