“Why? Oh, well - I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know.”

“Mother says that people like me just become intellectual old maids,' I told him.'I don't see why,' he protested.'Oh, well, it's probably true!' I said, rather sharply, for misery had as usual made me irritable. 'After the War there'll be no one for me to marry.''Not even me?' he asked very softly.'How do I know I shall want to marry you when that time comes?''You know you wouldn't be happy unless you married an odd sort of person.''That rather narrows the field of choice, doesn't it?''Well--do you need it to be so very wide?”

“Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me - there's nothing I'd rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can't. I quite literally can't. Because, don't you see, what I know is what I am? And I can't tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.”

“I think there's something so attractive about mystery. There's something so attractive about the chase. And the bad guy ... bad boys know how to keep the chase going throughout an entire relationship because you never know if you completely have them or not. That's why they're so hard to get over.”

“I—I adore you, too. Well, I don't know if I adore you. That's not really the word I'd use. But I—I—" I managed to wrench it out. God, this was hard! "I love you.""Of course you do," he said, totally unsurprised."WHAT? I finally tell you my deepest, most personal feelings and you're all, 'Yeah, I already got that memo'? This, this is why you drive me nuts! This is why it's so hard to tell you things! I take it back.”

“Trust you? Rue--trust you? You counterfeited your own death rather than wed me. You told me you'd rather die than stay in Darkfrith. I can't--I don't know how to fix that. I don't know how to mend it. Tell me." He took a step toward her. "Tell me, and I'll do it.”