Anna

“Unfortunately, the more time he [Gaunt] spent with Elisabeth, the more apparent it became how fruitless it was to try to want her. He could appreciate her beauty in an artistic sense, as if she were a sculpture in a museum, but it was a flat, textureless sort of admiration. If love was stepping off a cliff in the hope of flying, there was a wall at the precipice that had never been there with Sandys, or Ellwood, or even Devi, whom Gaunt had helplessly adored at thirteen. He felt no fear around Elisabeth, because there was no chance of falling. He was fond of her, but he would never say to her, '"Withhold no atom's atom of I die!”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Call me Sidney,” said Ellwood.
“Sidney,” said Gaunt, so quickly, as if he had been waiting years to say it ... He pressed their foreheads together. “This means I’m keeping you,” he added, his voice fierce with warning.
As if it wasn’t exactly what Ellwood wanted to hear.
“You can have me,” he told Gaunt, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“In the hypermasculine atmosphere of war, they were not overly concerned with manliness.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“My dearest, darling Sidney,' There was nothing else. Only dead white paper, blank and meaningless. A comma, followed by nothing. Death summed up by grammar.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam