“Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.”

“The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole.”

“This was what it was. The ruin of it. The depth of it. Have it once and you can have it again. That’s the riddle. That’s the truth.”

“Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.”

“Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said... And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.”

“Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.”

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”