Yes, I am free, she said to herself, but it's not like ordinary freedom, it's being in hell, a brilliant lucid hell.

What larks we had," said James. "When?""When we were young."I could not recall any larks I had had with James. I poured out the wine and we sat in silence.

And suffering we know breeds images, it breeds the most beautiful images of all.

One morning, one day, perhaps soon, she would come to him and find him gone; and she knew how much she did not want to see him die, and yet how much she also wished that he might die holding her hand. These thoughts induced tears, which he must not see; and she tried not to think too much about the terrible mystery which was to be enacted . . .

I had been confronted (at last) with a sizeable ordeal labelled with my name. This was not something to be wasted.

In a way it does not matter where I am. In another way where I am is fated.

He felt indestructible because destroyed.

When one is very close to Truth itself, truthfulness vanishes.

But there can be intuitions even here of a more sublime agony.