E. M. Forster

It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.

— Spoken by a character · I. The Bertolini

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted.

“Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter 27

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it--and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil. I don’t die--I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m just not there.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter 8

For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or--to put the thing less cynically--we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.