There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.