“Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.”

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this —But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.”

“You looked at me like you saw something good. You made me remember everything I loved about you, before I'd fallen. And how could I ever damn such a beautiful creature? I couldn't. That look made me want to be a better man, for you”

“my only complaints are two:that I didn't make myself readyfor you sooner in life, thatI can't give you better,Love you more.”

“If I give you more love, it will only give me more love to give. The more I give, the more I have to give.”

“You're good at love," she said simply, because it seemed to her that it was true. "I'm not so good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away."He shrugged. "I don't mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.”