Anthony Patch Quotes

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me you’d better go.”

“Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”

“Experience is not worth the getting. It’s not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it’s a wall that an active you runs up against.”

“His mind tired--tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

“He had never met anyone like her before. He sought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn’t want to fall in love. He wasn’t coming to see her any more--already she had haunted too many of his ways.”

“‘Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard.’ She was crying upon his shoulder. ‘So damned hard, so damned hard,’ he repeated aimlessly; ‘it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.’”

“What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow--only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He would come back--eternally. He should have known!”

“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something’s lost--something’s left behind. You can’t ever quite repeat anything, and I’ve been so yours, here--”

“You can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it--but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone--”