“And the worst thing she had heard were the words he hadn't said, the fact that he hadn't loved her.”

“He hadn't stopped wanting love. He had simply, somehow, stopped looking.”

“But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn't felt it go away, as if he'd known the best moment to let go.”

“Of course she'd told him she would, but if the man hadn't registered her sarcasm, then he wasn't making full use of his ears.”

“Looking at him now-even if she hadn't been in love with him, that part of her that was her mother's daugher, that loved every beautiful thing for its beauty alone, would still have wanted him.”

“He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.”

“They had met at a club fifteen years before, Etta and Magnus. He had convinced her to dance with him, and she said she had been in love by the end of the song. He told her he had been in love before the beginning.”

“She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't been
her fault, but the fault
of that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt.”

“He said: "If I thought more of myself?"
"You wouldn't have much difficulty in finding it," she answered. "Let's walk."
He didn't understand the first phrase, but he turned and went by her side, silent while he heard the words.  Much difficulty in finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he thought of himself more; that was what he had said or she had said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was apart and his; for that was the difficulty all the while, that she was truly his, and wouldn't be, but if he thought more of her truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way, for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if they did away with the way she went away, then Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves, two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him, in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of himself.”

“There was both love and despair in his voice.
He was truly handicapped when it came to emotions, and falling in love hadn't changed that…”