“This is freedom. This is the face of faith, nobody getswhat they want. Never again are you the same. The longingis to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more byeach glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself.Also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of somethingat sea. Here hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, hurry. And if I listennow? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was onlysomething I did. I could not chose words. I am free to go.I cannot, of course, come back. Not to this. Never.It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”

“This is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longingis to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”

“...love / is turning out the lights when others do, a curfew we / would take / for sails.”

“He had opened the book at random several times, seeking a sortes Virgilianae, before he chose the sentences on which his code was to be based. 'You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.' It was as if in choosing that passage, he were transmitting a signal of defiance to both the services. The last word of the message, when it was decoded by Boris or another, would read 'goodbye.”

“Whether or not that’s how it is,” I said, “we must live according to what we believe, not the beliefs of others.”“The beliefs of others are not irrelevant, not when they shape the world we live in!”“I didn’t say they were irrelevant. But they will never dictate my judgment or my decisions,” I snapped back. “Because others believe something does not make it true. You are not stupid because Plato says you must be, nor is Cleopatra a whore because some Roman wit will say it. I will never trust any learned opinion more than what I see in front of my face.”

“I'm only saying I want you to be happy. I hate your being unhappy. I don't mind anything you do that makes you happy."You just want an excuse. If I sleep with anybody else, you feel you can do the same - any time."That's neither here nor there. I want you to be happy, that's all."You'd make my bed for me?"Perhaps.”

“Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.”