“He'd observed over the centuries that what made people old was when they could no longer keep up with change. It's the beginning of the end, though few recognize it as such at the time.”

“I´ve always wanted him to love me the way I loved him. He did love me, I know he did. Just not the way I wanted him to."And it´s so different for a lot of people I´ve known. One partner doesn´t love the other enough to stop drinking, or gambling, or running around with other women. One is the giver and one is the taker. The giver wishes the taker would stop.""But the taker never changes," Luke says, though he wonders if this is always the case."Sometimes the giver has to let go, but sometimes you don´t. You can´t. I couldn´t give up on Jonathan. I seemed to be able to forgive him anything.”

“A man´s desire is a powerful thing. It can reduce a strong man to nothing. When he sees a woman who fascinates him, he will give up everything for her.”

“It was like being in love with the sun: brilliant and intoxicating to be near, but impossible to keep to oneself.”

“Men hid behind religion to keep others from seeing how frightened they were, how inept.”

“We were arrogant and naive, thinking we knew what we felt then was love. Love can be a cheap emotion, lightly given, thought it didn´t seem so to me at the time. Looking back, I know we were only filling in the holes in our soles, the way the tide rushes sand to fill in the crevices of a rocky shore. We-or maybe it was just I-bandaged our needswith what we declared was love. But, eventually, the tide draws out what it has swept in.”

“I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.”