“When I stay with the couple who are my closest friends, I hear them laughing and talking in bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night one of them goes down and makes tea, and when the clock goes off in the morning, they start again, talking to each other.”

“Lovers are allowed to be as cruel as anything to the one who dissappoints them.”

“Permanence, I once copied down from a magazine, is what we all want when we can love and can be loved; change is what we want when we cannot.”

“..though silence must add intensity to your intimate moments, it must also shrivel your soul to lie beside someone who doesn't talk to you.”

“...when I was young, I learned to feel for the harshness under every soft appearance.”

“Let me just say that I am not often lonely in country places. In cities I am, like the writers of the letters. Nature doesn't break your heart: other people do. Yet, we cannot live apart from each other in bowers feeding on nectar. We're in this together, this getting through our lives, as the fact that we are word-users shows.”

“But this upland pass was the right place for remembering how, when I was young, I learned to feel for the harshness underneath every soft appearance.”