A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.

A man kept his character even when he was insane.

What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment?

Hate is a lack of imagination.

There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.

Oh, she doesn't belong to anybody now,' he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are all possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.