The Beautiful and Damned

How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.

However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes.

"This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last."

She was deeply herself

No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving.

But I never want to change people or get excited over them.

Maury gazed helplessly into space.
"Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops.

wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.

forgotten her vividness of emotion, which is true forgetting.

There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses—bound for dust—mortal