You don't understand people like me, like us, the other ones. You're like a bird that flies in the air, a fish that swims in the sea. You move, you l… - Iris Murdoch

let us not waste love, it is rare enough

The idea of killing himself was now more real to him than it had ever been, and he understood for the first time how it is that men can prefer extinction to the continuation of agonizing mental pain. He simply must somehow stop himself from suffering in this way. A guilt about Sophie roved sharply inside him and a cinematograph in his head re-enacted and re-enacted certain scenes. He must, he thought, now somehow switch himself off or else move on into some new and even more awful mode of being.

I had deluded myself throughout by the idea of reviving a secret love which did not exist at all.