People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.

I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that." "You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all." "But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. I'm so sick.

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.