“Nobody bothered with him. His failures were private and invisible”

“Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible”

“She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.”

“It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.”

“She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.”

“His power over her was limited, because she didn't love him.”

“You broke up with him," a combination Effie-Carmen voice in her head reminded her."But that didn't mean you were allowed to stop loving me," she felt like saying to him.”