“Love. It has always seemed to me that love is a combination of lust and pity. (...) I've got to have some feelings of pity for a girl to love her. She's got to have a fragile quality of some sort.”

“She didn't want pity. Just to love a man and have a man love her. This was nothing to apologize for or feel weak or needy about. It just was.”

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used.”

“She dreams of him that has forgot her love;You dote on her that cares not for your love.'Tis pity love should be so contrary;And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!”

“Why are some of us, he wondered, unable to love success or power or great beauty? Because we feel unworthy of them, because we feel more at home with failure? He didn't believe that was the reason. Perhaps one wanted the right balance, just as Christ had, the legendary figure whom he would have liked to believe in. 'Come unto me all ye that travail are and heavy laden.' Young as the girl was at that August picnic she was heavily laden with her timidity and shame. Perhaps he had merely wanted her to feel that she was loved by someone and so he began to love her himself. It wasn't pity, any more than it had been pity when he fell in love with Sarah pregnant by another man. He was there to right the balance. That was all.”

“I asked her if she’d give me all her love, and she flatly said no. I got excited because while she said she wouldn’t give me all her love, she said nothing about not wanting to give me some of her love.”