“But I'd also learned that the self might want one thing, but that didn't mean it was right.”

“‎But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did.”

“I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.”

“I'd live with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there... one learns to keep it at bay, there are times when one even enjoys it - but there are also times when a desperate self-sufficiency doesn't quite suffice, and then the search for the anodyne begins... the radio, the dog, the shampoo, the stockings-to-wash, the tin soldier...”

“This, I realized suddenly, was friendship. You didn't always agree, and you both might do things the other person wished you didn't, but it didn't mean things came to a grinding halt. It didn't mean you stopped being friends. You got over it, and you moved on.”

“It didn't mean forever but for right now I wanted Rush to be my first. He wouldn't be my last. A stop I might never forget or get over. That was what scared me the most. Not being able to move on.”