...girls, women, are not interested in romance but only facts. - William Faulkner

And when Hightower approaches, the smell of plump unwashed flesh and unfresh clothing — that odor of unfastidious sedentation, of static overflesh not often enough bathed — is well nigh overpowering. [...] It is the odor of goodness. Of course it would smell bad to us that are bad and sinful.

We never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we would ever be brought to this, did we?You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough even to accept your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism.

Perhaps love cannot live anywhere but books.