“Just so you know? Just so we're clear. I care about you, too. And if this hug is all I can have, I'd prefer it over anything else from anyone else.”

“My darling love, I think you have a fundamental misconception about what it means to be a great dandy. I have better taste than anyone else so I don't care what anyone else thinks about anything. I am right and they are wrong.”

“But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.”

“You know, Ellsworth,' Keating said, leaning forward, happy in an uneasy kind of way, 'I'd rather talk to you than do anything else, anything at all. I had so many places to go tonight--and I'm so much happier sitting here with you. Sometimes I wonder how I'd ever go on without you.' 'That,' said Toohey, 'is as it should be. Or else what are friends for?”

“If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them-just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.”

“But I know what it means to crave what you're not. To want to sew up that rift because it's exhausting to hold it open. Sometimes you just need to be someone else, someone who doesn't care about anything at all. I know I do. I want emptiness but I can't have it.”