“She would but be repaid by my taking her to wife, and that I could not grant her, for love cometh of the heart and mot by constraint.”

“I was in America, someone wanted a photo with me, I put my arm around her and she told me not to touch her.”

“She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it. [..] Sometimes it seemed to Nathan that her life was just that, a feat of held breath, just another ten seconds, just another five, and then death would flood her lungs like water, a string of glass bubbles to the surface and then nothing. She was scared in a way that he could understand. The kind of fear that sends you running across a six-lane highway or jumping into rapids. She was someone who ran towards her fear, screaming. Who tried to frighten it. Who, in another period of history, would have been worshipped as a saint or burned as a witch.”

“You must tell me about it when you do,' she said. 'When you make love for the first time, I mean. I want to know what you think.'He glanced away from her, out of the window. An ice-cream parlour, a man with a dog, a tree. How was he going to get out of shopping next week?'It's so wonderful, it's like,' and she left her mouth open while she thought, and then it came to her, and she smiled, 'it's like colours everywhere.”

“The War Sonnets: V. The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.”

“You gave me the key of your heart, my love;Then why did you make me knock?”

“FailureBecause God put His adamantine fateBetween my sullen heart and its desire,I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,But Love was as a flame about my feet;Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beatThrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry --All the great courts were quiet in the sun,And full of vacant echoes: moss had grownOver the glassy pavement, and begunTo creep within the dusty council-halls.An idle wind blew round an empty throneAnd stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.”