Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.

I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.

They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

I had committed myself: without love I'd have to go through the gestures of love.