"One way of poisoning love is to mingle it with hate. It is the best way but in some ways the most dangerous. Love and hate are the cat and mouse of our emotions, sometimes the cat chases the mouse, often the mouse chases the cat; but when both cat and mouse are tired of chasing each other there is little left to do. All one can do then is to admit the most bitter truth of all, the most bitter but also the best: that two people in love with each other can not be alone on an island without ceasing to love; that they can not be an island, they need contact with the mainland, they need other people. It is cold comfort for those who believe that love is an island in the sea, and when we have grown tired of islands very little consolation remains. When we have grown tired of loving we are glad that the one we love is not the only person in the world."

“They talked quietly, lying on their backs and letting the words float up to the ceiling as though they were talking to themselves. By reason of their calmness they could tell each other everything without shame, without its sounding like a confession. Nor were they surprised at what they found out about each other.”

“Browsing in books as lovers do, they were only being considerate, because their tenderness to each other made them tender towards others as well.”

“Nothing is so beautiful as the first few minutes alone with someone who might love one and someone whom one might love. There is nothing so quiet as those minutes, nothing so saturated with sweet expectancy. It is for the sake of those few minutes that one loves, not the many that follow. Never again, they knew, would anything so beautiful happen to them. They would be more joyous perhaps; more ardent too, and immeasurably content with their own bodies, and each other's. But never again would it be so beautiful.”

“The worst of his life is not that he thinks that it is living, but that he is satisfied with it, and the most awful thing of life is that he thinks that is how it should be. He can't understand anyone who thinks differently from him, and when he can't understand anything he says: I'm sorry, but I'm only a humble joiner. It's all he can do to accept that fact that I am studying the history of literature and Scandinavian languages: he accepts it not because I will thereby become mentally enriched, but because he thinks that it will enable me to live an easier life that he. Easier but not different.”

“They told me that everybody must think of his future and what is more that everybody did. Then I found that they were right: I looked round me among those who believed as they and I did, and couldn't find a single one who was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of his belief. For a little while perhaps they were prepared to sacrifice something, but when their personal dreams of the future came into conflict with their faith, they chose the dream. Those who had the luck to be officials came off best. They had no need to renounce their faith, it cooled off a bit perhaps, but they had no need to renounce it; not was there any need for them to renounce for dream of their personal happiness, for officials with cold faith can get as far as they like. So I soon stopped sacrificing everything for my faith, because anyone sacrifices everything all by himself is just stupid.”

“To die is to become like a child, at last one knows nothing, nothing of death and nothing of life, only that all distances are equally long and all words unintelligible but beautiful.”