“He felt good. At worst he had found a brand-new way to die.”

“He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.”

“He had found my worst weakness: I was one of those people who was desperate to be needed, to matter to someone.”

“…. Above all, he was ashamed of his world, for the world about him had branded his world as bad, inferior. Moreover, he felt no moral strength or compulsion to defend his world. That in him which had always made him self-conscious was now the bud of a new possible life that was pressing ardently but timidly against the shell of the old to shatter it and be free.”

“For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and satisfied, drove on into the night.”

“Come here sister… Papa's in the swing.
He ain't too hip… about that new breed babe.
He ain't no drag,
Papa's got a brand new bag.”

“The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all.”

“A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one?”

“The headlands and the hedges were so fresh and wonderful, so gay with the dawn of the world. Tarry never tired looking at these ordinary things as he tired of the Mass and of religion. In a dim way he felt that he was not a Christian. In the god of Poetry he found a God more important to him than Christ. His god had never accepted Christ.”

“Let a politician die, and his worst enemies will stand up on the floor of the House and utter pious lies in his honour, but a writer or artist must be sniffed at, at least if he is any good.”