“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed har...”

“He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code that he had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophet was Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reforme...”

“You know I'm old in some ways-in others-well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility.”

“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”