I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.

I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.