I tell you, Madame, if one gave birth to a heart on a plate, it would say 'Love' and twitch like the lopped leg of a frog. - Djuna Barnes

She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in man’s image is a figure of doom.

"The doctor looked at her. "For the lover, it is the night into which his beloved goes," he said, "that destroys his heart; he wakes her suddenly, only to look the hyena in the face that is her smile, as she leaves that company.

And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough — you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me — be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.