“Hungry”, she said, “That’s what it’s like. Inside of me, always. This ... hunger that nothing is able to assuage. It’s horrible. It’s why I always feel ... well, empty. I know I can’t keep living this way, but I don’t know how to make the hunger stop.”“Perhaps you’re not meant to”, he said, “Perhaps you’re meant to cope with it. Either that or to come to realize that the hunger and the appeasement are two entirely different things. They’re unrelated. One will never quell the other.”She thought about this. She considered how much of herself – and the way she’d lived so long – had been tied up with a single unfulfilled desire. She finally said, “This is not who I want to be.”“Then be someone else.”Deborah/Lynley”

“You know, when you think about it, that’s kind of a weird thing. I mean it’s meant to be sympathetic, right? But it’s kind of not. Like you’re telling the person there’s nothing unique about what they’re sayingI considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, finally, “but you could also look at it the other way. Like no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.”

“I’m not this girl,” she whispered against his lips. He had to know, this wasn’t her. She didn’t kiss strange men. She didn’t feel this deep hunger inside.“I know you’re not,” he said. “But I am this man.”

“I feel it in here," she said, placing her hand against her chest and then against her stomach, "and here. It’s like there’s not enough air or room inside me. That I may… burst out of my skin or drown in it, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I always have… and will." She tipped her chin up and her entire face was a rosy color. "It’s you. I… I love you.”

“She was a believer, you know," the Captain said. "My wife. She thought socialism was the only thing that would make us strong again. There would be a difficult period, she always said, some sacrifices. And then things would be better. I didn't think I would miss that, you know. I didn't realize how much I needed someone to keep telling me why.”

“I love you, Eliza,” I said.She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.”“Why not?” I said.“It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?”