“It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention”

“Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing.”

“He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.”

“I love that girl, Bertie," he went on, when he'd finished coughing."Yes. Nice girl, of course."He eyed me with deep loathing."Don't speak of her in that horrible casual way. She's an angel. An angel!”

“She looked at ways to quantify life. Analytic in nature, her head almost always overruled her heart. Love it? Hate it? She wanted to KNOW it.”

“He loved her as he had never loved another, and he trusted her as he had allowed himself to trust no one else. But by the nature of the world, those who loved and trusted were uniquely vulnerable”