“But she did love him. I believe it. I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention.”

“I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive.”

“[...] Essence simply enjoys and commits attention and love to whatever is. In fact, committing attention to anything that is present results in enjoyment. The ego enjoys so little because it commits attention to what isn't present and to what it doesn't have, and suffers over that, instead of committing attention to whatever is. It loves its fantasies, dreams, and desires more than it loves reality.”

“We were on Barrow Street now."Who is the man with the scar?" I said.She shot me a glance, and her face hardened. "You saw him?""How could I miss? He was the real center of attention. Didn't you go to the opening at all?""No" She said. "And just because you saw him doesn't mean he was there.”

“I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is-real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she's right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you're seeing. Complete attention, one of the other..."but in that case," he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, "all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn't it? Looking closely at what's being painted.""The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting, Writing-literature-also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It's the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It's the history of love.”

“Maybe this is why Misty loved him. Loved you. Because you believed in her so much more than she did. You expected more from her than she did from herself.”