“Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.”

“Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.”

“Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough.”

“Sally...can no longer think of love as a reality, or even as a possibility, however remote.”

“I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.”

“Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.”

“If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.”