“..but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.”

“There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.”

“God, youth is a terrible time! So much feeling and so little notion of how to handle it!”

“But when mother died, Caroline was twelve, and in that queer time between childhood and nubile girlhood, when some girls seem to be wise without experience, and perhaps more clear-headed then they will be again until after their menopause.”

“There comes a time when one must be strong with rationalists, for they can reduce anything whatever to dust, if they happen not to like the look of it, or if it threatens their deep-buried negativism. I mean of course rationalists like you, who take some little provincial world of their own as the whole of the universe and the seat of all knowledge.”

“Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay. That is the beginning of wisdom; that is part of what is meant by the fear of God; and for you it is the only way to save your sanity. Begin now, or you will end up with your saint in the madhouse.”

“But I was a lonely creature, and although I would have been very happy to have a friend I just never happened to meet one.”