“Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.”

“He had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it.”

“What sort of man could you love for a lifetime?" he asked her.She was silent for a while. He guessed that she was considering her answer. "A kind man," she said. "When we are young and foolish we do not realize how essential a component of love kindness is. It is perhaps the most important quality. And an honorable man. Always doing the right thing no matter what."His heart sank-on both account."And a strong man," she said. "Strong enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to be honest even when honesty might expose him to ridicule or rejection. And someone who would put himself at the center of my world even before knowing that I would be willing to do the same for him. A man foolish and brave enough to tell me that he loves me even when I have hidden all signs that I love him in return.""Eve-" he said."He would have to be tall and broad and dark and hook-nosed," she said. "And frowning much of the time, pretending he is tough and impervious to all the finer emotions. And then smiling occasionally to light up my heart and my life."Good God!"He would have to be you," she said. "no one else would do. Which is just as well, considering the fact that I am married to you...”

“Perhaps we should do the learning - and learn not to communicate, or to do it in a different way. Now there is a thought. Perhaps we could learn your peace if we could share your silence.”

“Sometimes," he said, "it is necessary to go back before we can move forward.”

“I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone.""What do you fear then?" he asked her.She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words."Never finding myself again....”

“Families are wonderful institution," he said. "I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that.”