I was browsing through my copy of A Room With A View looking for quotes for my story. I love the book. And the movie. But the book is so under-appreciated and just filled with little gems. Like these:

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment, he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.

George’s father, Mr. Emerson to Lucy: “But you do,” he went on, not waiting for contradiction. “You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it. You won’t marry the other man for his sake.”

And: “You must marry, or your life will be wasted. You have gone too far to retreat. I have no time for the tenderness, and the comradeship, and the poetry, and the things that really matter, and for which you marry. I know that, with George, you will find them, and that you love him. Then be his wife. He is already a part of you. Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thought till you die. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets were right: love is eternal.”

He carried her to the window, so that she, too, saw all the view. They sank upon their knees, invisible to the road, they hoped, and began to whisper one another’s names. Ah! it was worth while; it was the great joy they had expected, and countless little joys of which they had never dreamt. They were silent.