“He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.”

“How does he love me?With adoration, with fertile tears,With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.”

“I never hated you. My anger was never with you, but with the little hell my heart had put me in. The anger always passed. I never regretted loving you. If I had gone to my grave never kissing you or touching you, I still would not have thought it a wasted love.”

“With Lizard, I felt overwhelmed by the desire to touch her skin, to kiss her, hold her, make love to her,no matter how it happened, I just had to have her, Lizard and no one else. Right then and there. Tears came to my eyes, I wanted her so much.”

“There is something there. Not desire, not romance, but acquiescence. She understands; she forgives. this is love, he thinks with a settling sigh. This is love. The duration is of no consequence We love to know we are known. We ache to know it.”

“What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation.”