'Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker, and so you can stand less and less.' — 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.