“I think," she said, "I thought I was telling you a story about how we fell in love." . . .
"What do you think the story is about now?" . . .
"Sometimes I think it's a story about being tricked. Not that he did it on purpose, but it wasn't accidental, him confiding in me, just then." Of course every confidence is a kind of manipulation. Or calculation. I trust you with this. Or maybe it's I want you to think that I trust you with this.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“It was his desperation I despised.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Trapped, yes, but in a hedge maze of her own careful design.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Do my words sound cold, even cruel? Perhaps it helps to know that as I said this, I was smiling.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Also . . . I didn't realize how many times he'd told the story. I should have known, how polished it was. The practiced hesitations. I thought he was opening a door. And that on the other side of the door was—intimacy, I guess. Only it was just a room. A crowded one.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Good intentions, sure, but when have they ever been enough.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Like I was in some knockoff Henry James novel, some knockoff Merchant Ivory adaptation of same.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Also that this cruelty was, for us, a way to commune. A source, even, of joy.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Another of the premises of our friendship was that we loathed emotional intimacy even as we understood its necessity. Speaking with casual nonchalance about subjects that caused us great pain was our preferred workaround.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet’s fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women”
Source: Madman's Defence