“Theyd scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own termsnot just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating.”

“Not everyone believed in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too - that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.”

“We knew what we had and what it meant, and though so much had happened since for both of us, there was nothing like those years in Paris, after the war. Life was painfully pure and simple and good,...”

“He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins.”

“There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage, but in the end fighting for love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.”

“They love me like a pack of wolves.Ernest”

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyon...”

“Thats love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.”

“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”