The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning.

I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot.

Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.