It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

We forget very easily what gives us pain.

It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.