“For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.”

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

“What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.”

“Elizabeth could never address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and, though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.”

“SITUATIONAL INTIMACY: Intimacy generated by a shared situation rather than a romantic or familial relationship, as when random train or airliner seatmates share their innermost secrets.”

“for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge”