Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?

To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.