He told himself he had never felt so happy, and he felt a sort of ache that this was happening and would never again happen in just this way no matter how long he lived.

People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids.

Tourists reminded him of other places and elicited in him a prodding doubt that living here was what he wanted.

Let us so live in this trying time that when it is all over we can look one another in the eye with the knowledge that we have behaved honourably and fairly.

Everybody knows what God is,′ said his mother. ‘You feel what God is, don’t you?

For them it might stave off what he could not help but see with clarity: that the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty.

The place felt sinister, though. Your imagination can get the better of you where a road ends against a forest.

He decided then that he would love her forever no matter what came to pass. It was not so much a matter of deciding as accepting the inevitability of it.

I have been trying to think clearly about everything and to use all this distance to advantage. And here is what I’ve discovered. I don’t love you, Ishmael.

I don’t feel anything either way. No feeling about it comes to me – it’s not something I have a choice about. Isn’t a feeling like that supposed to happen? I can’t make a feeling like that up, can I? Maybe God just chooses certain people, and the rest of us – we can’t feel Him.