“But now, all of a sudden, there appeared before me the absurd, loathsomely spiderish notion of debauchery, which, without love, crudely and shamelessly begins straight off with that which is the crown of true love.”

“The sun now radiated all around me and the magnificent palace that lay before me glittered invitingly. Which reminded me of another one of Mother’s sayings: if something appears too good to be true, it probably is.”

“Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.”

“And there's no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.”

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

“For in this love he now felt there was compassion: without which love is untempered, and is not whole, and does not last.”