“To love makes one solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now...”

“Septimus has been working too hard" - that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought.”

“She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.”

“What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?” She didn’t know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost.”

“It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.”

“But of course, it had all been her – by her and about her, and now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky”