It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency a… - Edith Wharton

I can't love you unless I give you up.

I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.