“There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.”

“Oh gods... oh gods... I had hurt him... so many times, I had hurt him. By trying to hurt myself, I had hurt him. By trying to push him away, I had hurt him. Every time I opened my mouth and belittled myself with my "turns of rough poetry", I had sliced his heart as fine as my wrists. I did not know why he loved me as he did. I might never know. But as I stood there and held him, my back nagging at me and my leg screaming in protest, I realized that the least I could do was welcome his love with an open heart. And part of doing that was loving myself enough to want to live.”

“God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had and I lay on the bed in the room of the hospital in Milan and all sorts of things went through my head but I felt wonderful...”

“I'm marrying him because I admire his intelligence and his compassion. I'm marrying him because he's part of me already. Because he's the one person who has always known my heart. Because I could trust him to know what I needed if I couldn't figure it out by myself. Because he loves me, and I love him. And I need him.”

“The moment that I realized that I wanted to be a better man for him and that because of him I was a better man than I was before I met him, that was when I realized that I loved him. No flaw that he had, no quirk could ever make me stop loving him and he knows that, so he's free to be himself and he's free to love me and because he loves me I'm free to be myself, knowing that no flaw that I have and no quirk could ever make him stop loving me.”

“Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would look for him, and he would always appear by my side. That is love.’ Sveta”