“Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn't do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself.”

“What kind of person actually sits down and decides that no one should be allowed to end a sentence with a preposition? Not even decide what ideas you should or shouldn't talk about, but to actually make rules about what order to put your words in... It's such an amazing kind of petty tyranny.”

“I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.”

“Time stretched, expanded so there was just him and me and the closenss, and I thought how it was all very well to tell yourself what you should and shouldn't feel but in the end the should word didn't make the slightest scrap of difference.”

“In the end we had changed the position of the hands so many times that we had no idea what the time really was.”

“Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long.”