“It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.”

“This life had always been my routine but now it felt like a cage.”

“They pointed out that the friendship between the two artistes had always been a by-word or whatever you called it. A well-read Egg summed it up by saying they were like Thingummy and what's-his-name”

“Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.”

“She was married, true; but if one's husband was always sailing round Cape Horn, was it marriage? If one liked him, was it marriage? If one liked other people, was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts.”

“I wished I had been able to make her look that way, but it is the destiny of a lover to watch unhappiness hardening like a cast around his mistress.”