“The love withheld is always the love we long for most.”

“She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to be loved by the unlovable was not something that most people could cope with.”

“You can’t be selfish. But we men-it’s a wonder we forget ourselves long enough to buy a birthday card. As for love... we can love, but we’re always forgetting.”

“we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.”

“To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares,- to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existence of a ghost).”

“The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.”