“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds...”

“You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that.""Further?""With your life. You must become free."She did not explain it; she could not. It was not a matter of living alone, though in h...”

“The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change ones life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river wa...”

“...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though en...”

“She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea ...”

“But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires.”

“He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.”

“i have laughedmore than daffodilsand cried more than June.”

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”

“I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I w...”