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The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.

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She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each ren...more

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He loved her; in some ways he was devoted to her. But he couldn't reach her, and it was the same on her side. It was as if they'd drunk some fatal pot...more

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This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

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How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, h...more

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Where were we? I've forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.Right. Yes. The usual choices.

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He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

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An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found th...more

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What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; on...more

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I'm sad now, the way we're talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possi...more

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Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same ...more

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Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

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I remember Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter. Close your eyes and think of England.

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Falling in love... how could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy...more

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Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprin...more