Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it.

The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.

That's how women are with me " said Paul. "They want me like mad but they don't want to belong to me.

Another head - and a black alpaca jacket and a serviette this time - to tell us coffee is ready. Not before it is time, too.

In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred orange and scrub the floor.