Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different-- in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each others hearts.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.

They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically when they read ... Their chance was to make everything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend tiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the place of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much of a dream.