Katherine

“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

“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

“I look back now with some anguish to each touch and glance, to every changing conjunction of limbs and heads and hands. I have lived it over every day for so long now that I am in danger of forgetting the true shape of how it was, because each time I go over it I wish that I had given a little more here or there, or at the very least said what was in my heart, so that he could have known how much it meant to me. But I was incapable, even when happy, of exposing myself thus far.”
― Margaret Drabble, The Millstone

“He talked on lovingly, about his books, as I had never heard anyone talk before. The instant sense of companionship it gave me was like the warmth of a fire to someone grown accustomed to the lack of it, who is hardly conscious of the cold until it is over; I realized then how much I had been longing for a friend of this kind.

Here at last, walking by my side, was someone else who cared for books, and realized the excellence of being alive. It was wonderful. He was the first real comrade I had found.”
― E. Arnot Robertson, Cullum