“He’s gone, incinerated for all time. I am the ashes left behind, soaked with too many tears, and burdened with an infinite future I cannot see. Our life together is finished.”

“Tear up that funeral shroud—you are going to smother yourself in it. I am beauty, I am youth, I am life—come to me, and together we will be Love itself....Our life together will flow by like a dream, and it will be as one perpetual kiss.”

“Deep down, underneath all his layers of stupidity, he’s a really goodman. He may act out far too many selfish thoughts, says all the wrong thingsat all the wrong times, but behind closed doors he’s a best friend. I understandthat he has idiotic tendencies and I can still love him for it. He may notbe someone that you feel comfortable sitting next to at a dinner party but forme, he’s someone that I feel comfortable sharing my life with.”

“Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.”

“For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished."Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.”

“I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.”