Oh, how good it is to be with someone, sometimes.

A woman's work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man's working day. ... To men, women's work was like the rain-bringing clouds, or the rain itself. The task involved was carried out every day as regularly as sleep. So men were happy - men in the Middle Ages, men at the time of the Revolution, and men in 1986: everything in the garden was lovely.

He says he’s lonely, horribly lonely because of this love he feels for her. She says she’s lonely too. She doesn’t say why.

Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.

I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight

One must talk. That's how it is. One must.

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.