'And, at the risk of losing forever your so remarkably candid friendship, let me tell you something… — James Baldwin

I shall never be able to have any more of these boyish, zestful affairs — which are, really, when one thinks about it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly.

She is smiling and her eyes are kind but now the smile is purely social

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.