Is there a friendship possible this side of love which could be sought and found? I speak no more of love – the word and its conventions have become odious to me. But is there a friendship possible to attain which is deeper, even limitlessly deep, and yet wordless, idealess? It seems somehow necessary to find a human being to whom one can be faithful, not in the body (I leave that to the priests) but in the culprit mind?…I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants.

- From Justine by Lawrence Durrell