Charlotte Rayder

“Ever since that evening when you gave me my hat, I've been as true to you as I've got it in me to be. Don't force me to where untruth starts. You say nothing would make you hate me. But once make me hate myself and you'd make me hate you.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people's sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with the love of God and everyman. ... But the man is old, after all, his fountains of life run dry, without a trace remaining of human affections. ... Only someone who has become slow and watertight with old age, satiated and hardened with pleasure, will go to youth and say, Renounce! ... And yet the youth renounces nothing, but sins royally for forty years. Such is the course of nature!”
― Knut Hamsun, Mysteries

“What do you want me to say?"

"I wish you would say something. Our life goes by without any comment.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart