“And how is Uncle Edward? or is he dead? I've reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.”

“When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity…”

“There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.”

“Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity.”

“You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us ... But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of cheese. You don't do crosswords, do you, Mr. Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerning the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion.”

“Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.”

“She thought for the first time, with happiness: perhaps I have a life in people's minds when I am not there to be seen or talked to.”