“The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;Their over-greedy love has surfeited.An habitation giddy and unsureHath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.”

“Silence is an easy habit. But it doesn't come naturally. Silence has to be cultivated, enforced by implication and innuendo, looks and glances, hints of dark consequence. Silence is greedy. It insists upon its own necessity. It transcends generations.”

“He was rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama too, but too broad--too broad. When the mother died, he took the port-wine business.''The port-wine business!' cried Nicholas.'Drinking port-wine with the clown,' said the manager; 'but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass, and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last.”

“Life has a habit of making the easy desperately difficult, and the hardest choices so easy as to be no choice at all.”

“It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.”

“It's a physical sickness. Étienne. How much I love him. I love Étienne. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent.”