“I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.”


“At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.”

He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know—but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come—I didn't know."
"You can't help yourself now. You must come."
"I don't want to help myself."
"Come then."
He did come. He flung down all the barriers—not at once, for he did not live in a house that can be destroyed in a day.

“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

“They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.”


“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.”


“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

“Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw him beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there.”

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”


“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”


“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”