Katherine

“And this is all that has happened. It does not seem very much. I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and someone I loved dearly was killed in the war...and that is all. And all those things must be true of thousands of people.”
― Rosalind Murray, The Happy Tree

“And even then, even at that moment, I did not have the courage to ask him where he lived, or to ask him what his phone number was, for it would have seemed an intrusion, an assumption that I had a right to know, that a future existed where it would be of use to know. I see, oh yes I see that my diffidence, my desire not to offend looks like enough to coldness, looks like enough to indifference, and perhaps I mean it to, but this is not what it feels like in my head. But I cannot get out and say, Where do you live, give me your number, ring me, can I ring you? In case I am not wanted. In case I am tedious. So I let him go, without a word about any other meeting, though he was the one thing I wanted to keep...”
― Margaret Drabble, The Millstone

“Actually he never expected much of people, and so he wasn’t upset if they turned out to be shysters or chiselers or crooks. But a few people he trusted absolutely. It was when they betrayed him that he turned to rock.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“She will burn bright until she goes out; she will go on standing on tiptoe until she falls.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety