She was overstrained with grief and loneliness: almost any shoulder would have done as well.

He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want -- not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable...'very few things matter and nothing matters very much

Writers aren't exactly people.... They're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person.

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

The price for his intactness was incompleteness.

When I'm with you, I don't breathe quite right.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

A squalid phantasmagoria of breath