“After someone's death, how strange to see the value drain away from his or her possessions; useful objects such as clothes, or dish towels, or personal papers become little more than trash.”

“It offended his sense of proportion and economy to throw away a ninety-percent serviceable string of lights. It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value and, by extension, the value of individuals generally: to willfully designate as trash an object that you knew wasn't trash.”

“We forgot to get sheets," Danny said."And dish-towels... I don't own a single dish-towel!" Kevin added his own problems."And bathroom stuff.""Not even paper towels! God – how could I forget paper towels!""I'll start a list... uh... Got anything I can write on?""No. Make that first on the list.""Got anything I can write with?""Maybe we'd better just go, Danny... before it gets worse.”

“She heard the zip of his pants, and expected him to step away from her, leave her alone in the bathroom to pull herself together. Instead, his hands were very gentle as he moved her out of the way, running water into the tiny sink.And then his hands were between her legs, and he was washing her, and she was too shocked to do anything more than let him. He tossed the paper towels, then took her discarded clothes from the floor and put them on her, waiting patiently as she lifted one foot, then the other. She was trembling, weak, totally compliant, and when he finished he wet another paper towel and washed her face with it, gently, like a lover.”

“It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone you loved him and when you had nothing else to give you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use it changed nothing it did not produce more chocolate it did not avert the child's death of her own but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper...What mattered were individual relationships and a completely helpless gesture an embrace a tear a word spoken to a dying man could have value in itself.”

“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”