John McGahern on love and anxiety

'She was beginning to understand that to be without anxiety was to be without love and that it could not be shared'... (page 102, 'By the Lake', a novel by John McGahern, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002)... the character,  Mary, thinking about her father, fond of watching out for him, returning home by pony and trap, from his Thursday round to the pub, returning back home alone in a pony and trap and often falling asleep.