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

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change.

I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16.

The East is marvellously interesting for tracing our steps back. But for going forward, it is nothing. All it can hope for is to be fertilised by Europe, so that it can start on a new phase.

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.

Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside really.

[U]nless a woman is held, by man, safe within the bounds of belief, she becomes inevitably a destructive force.