Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home.

It is not necessarily poverty of spirit that makes a woman surround herself with life - it can be a superabundance of interest.

Possibly it had occurred to him the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. [...] It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

He dispensed starlight to casual moths.

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

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