“It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself. ”

“[T]hink of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”

“It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”

“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

“Nobody teaches life anything.”

“It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.”

“...The girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.”