“Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.”

“for Pop, who sees the starsand Jude, who hears their music”

“But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know.”

“He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.”

“We observe that one of the great attributes of discretion is that it can mask ignorance of all the most common and lowly varieties, and Walter Moody was nothing if not excessively discreet.”

“Suffering, he thought later, could rob a man of his empathy, could turn him selfish, could make him depreciate all other sufferers.”

“What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?”

“Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere.”

“What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”

“For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.”

“I missed him so much that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place.”