They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love. - E. M. Forster

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him — that is the best account of it that has been yet given. Squalor and tragedy can beckon to all that is great in us; and strengthen the wings of love.

He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.

I wrote it [Maurice] neither for my friends or the public—but because it was weighing on me; and my previous training made me write it as literature, though for a long time I meant to show it no one at all. [...] I am much dependant on criticism and now, backed by you and some others, do feel that I have created something absolutely new, even to the Greeks. Whitman nearly anticipated me but he didn't really know what he was after, or only half knew—shirked, even to himself, the statement.