The Line of Beauty

" When he thought of Leo after not thinking of him for a minute or two he heard a big orchestral sound in his head. He saw Leo lying on his coat under a bush, his shirt and jersey pushed up under his armpits, his jeans and pants round his knees, small dead leaves sticking to his thighs - and he heard the astonishing chord. It was high and low at once, an abysmal pizzicato, a pounce of the darkest brass, and above it a hair raising sheen of strings. It seemed to knock him down and fling him up all in one unresisted gesture. He couldn't repeat it immediately, but after a while he would see Leo rising to kiss him, and the love-chord would shiver his skin again "

Maurice

" -- and he held out his hand. Maurice took it, and they knew at that moment the greatest triumph ordinary man can win. Physical love means reaction, being panic in essence, and Maurice saw now how natural it was that their primitive abandonment at Penge should have led to peril. They know too little about each other – and too much. Hence fear. Hence cruelty. And he rejoiced because he had understood Alec’s infamy through his own – glimpsing, not for the first time, the genius who hides in man’s tormented soul. Not as a hero, but as a comrade, had he stood up to the bluster, and found childishness behind it, and behind something else.”

Maurice

An excerpt form book Maurice -


" they played for the sake of each other and of their fragile relationship -- if one fell the other would follow. they intended no harm to the world, but so long as it attacked they must punish, they must stand wary, then hit with full strength, they must show that when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph. "