“Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard searching in them, and things to boot thrown in that don't belong there.”

“And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of”

“Now yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.”

“We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.”

“I suppose therefore God is the connoisseur of filthied hearts and souls, and can see the old, the first pattern in them, and cherish them for that.”

“He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet, like all of us.”

“I wanted to listen to him, but I did not want to answer now. That strange responsibility we feel towards others when they speak, to offer them the solace of any answer. Poor humans! And anyway he had not asked a question. He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet, like all of us.”