“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.”

“Snow is bruised lilac in half light: such pure solace.”

“Just as I was flung over the threshold, I embraced Grigoire the Swiss Fiancé in a rugger grip, determined that smug cockatoo was coming with me...Stone steps and icy pavements bruised my own flesh as black as his, banged my elbows and hips just as hard, but at least mine was not the only ruined evening in Bruges, and I yelled, kicking his ribs once for each word, before half-running, half-hobbling off on my whacked ankle, 'Love hurts!'”

“But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.”

“I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.”

“If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.”