“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 was quite pretty too in those days; indeed, perhaps she still was. But for some reason none of her boyfriends remained boyfriends for long. She had a very decided personality and fairly soon took to telling them what they should do with their lives and studies and work. She began to mother them or perhaps brother them (since she was something of a tomboy) - and this sooner or later took the edge off their romantic excitement. They even began to find her vivacity over-powering, and sooner or later edged away from her - with guilt on their side and pain on hers. This was a great pity, for Kalpana Gaur was a lively, affectionate, and intelligent woman, and deserved some recompense for the help and happiness she gave others”

“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.”

“There is an awful feeling of inevitability to life. Maybe this feeling is some proof of the existence of fate... or more likely it's simply the way our brains function that gives us this illusion. It's hard to say for certain.”

“Never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.”

“People claim that love is the deepest feeling, but don't you believe it. Loneliness is the most affecting of human emotions. Nothing makes life more vivid. If you wish to live in the moment, I recommend intense loneliness.”

“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.”