“But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.”

“Eventually she fell asleep, but I kept the phone against my ear, lulled by her breathing, and her breathing again in the background. And yes, it felt like home. Like everything belonged exactly where it was.”

“Then he had kept himself to himself, "in the way you might stick by a tree, which might be rotten, but at least it's a tree," and heart and understanding had been dismissed, pushed into the background.”

“When it comes to work - hurry, hurry, hurry. When it comes to payment - delay, delay, delay. Caste, religion, family background nothing. Talent everything.”

“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every colored creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.”

“America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.”