“The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no goo...”

“Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she we...”

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse. ”

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

“Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”