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61 " It's all someone else's secret. "
― Iris Murdoch , The Nice and the Good
62 " Yet she knew that it was not really the sharp tragic knife of passion that disturbed her now, it was some vaguer nervous storm out of her unsatisfied woman's nature. "
63 " The whole thing, the way it all happened, was shattering. And what it shattered most of all was some conception I'd had of myself, some wholeness. "
64 " I know how he is . . . and I can see he's not a convenient man to be in love with. "
65 " It's much better that I should read the letter. Otherwise I shall be endlessly wondering what was in it. "
66 " She would give ease to his too long wandering heart, and then he could live more fully in the world of other people, more able, because more happy, to give them his full attention. "
67 " Sometimes I just feel so shut in, with all those people and they've all got something while I've got nothing. "
68 " For a while everything became too terrible, one could scarcely bear to be conscious. "
69 " Mary thought suddenly, this is an abomination, sitting here and having this conventional conversation when I feel so desperate and deprived and torn inside. She thought, is there nothing I can do about it? "
70 " Today we will read love poetry. You shall read aloud to me and we will weep together. "
71 " He also wanted to destroy something, everything, perhaps himself. "
72 " It is unfortunately for us both also the truth that I love you and only you utterly and permanently and to distraction. "
73 " Sex comes to most of us with a twist. "
74 " Of course Paula had revealed her trouble to no one. She preserved it in her private heart like the awful bloody arcana of a mystical religion. "
75 " I just don't know what's going to happen. All I know is that whatever it is it's got to happen. Next week. "
76 " Theo wanted to call him back. But then he thought, oh let him go, there's no mending a fruitless love, it just has to be endured. "
77 " She had never been filled with her love like a calm brimming vessel. She had rather suffered it, as a tree might suffer a cold wind, and the image of a coldness was somehow mingled with her memories of marital love. "
78 " In the clairvoyance of this despair he had seen how much his folly had already damaged both of them. "
79 " Some inner organ would give way, her heart would literally break, if she did not see him soon. "
80 " In the torpor of the afternoon the remembered road had the slightly menacing and elusive familiarity of a place in a dream when one thinks: I have been here, yet where is it and what is going to happen? "