“I must have you, completely, at my table and in my bed, or I shall waste away like a starving prisoner. There you have it; forgive the lack of poesy.”

“Constancy is my true nature! I shall never look at another woman for the rest of my days, or rather, I shall look, but they shall be to me like chairs, or tables. Not that I intend to sit, of course, or eat off them, but in the sense that they are but furniture.”

“I should have never taught you girls to read! I suspect you have been reading the Bible behind my back-that is enough to fill a girl's head with folly?”

“Giulietta pressed the letter against her heart. "I know what you are thinking. You wish to protect me...And you think Romeo will cause me pain. Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right...but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”

“I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.”

“By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.”

“He is right. You have to feel it" - she reached out and touched a hand to my chest- "in here.”