What must love itself in its fullness, its perfection be. He did not know that what he was experiencing then, that unreal, undesirous medley of ecstasy and peace, would be unrecapturable forever.

Never miss a party...good for the nerves--like celery.

It's all life is. Just going 'round kissing people.

no girl can permanently bolster up a lame-duck visitor, because these day it's every girl for herself.

You've got an awfully kissable mouth.

Go on, she urged. Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.

I don't think he was ever happy unless someone was in love with him, responding to him like filings to a magnet, helping him to explain himself, promising him something. What it was I do not know. Perhaps they promised that there would always be women in the world who would spend their brightest, freshest, rarest hours to nurse and protect that superiority he cherished in his heart.

He was in love with every pretty woman he saw now, their forms at a distance, their shadows on the walls.

I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.