“I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way.”

“I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents.”

“I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque des Reves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate letters with such information, to have reveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper. We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared. -Friedrick Thiessen, 1895”

“You send me all these roses.Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up.I’m running out of vases.I didn’t know roses came in so many colors.You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain.I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.And you don’t get it.You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language.You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.”

“I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before.Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word.Both swimming in unknowns.I’ve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don’t and I’m not.Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen.Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay.Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.”

“I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.” “I’m in love with her.”“I am sorry to hear that,” he says. “It will make the challenge a great deal more difficult for you.”“We have been playing at this for more than a decade, when does it end?”“It ends when there is a victor.”

“Sting told me if I love somebody I should set them free.I doubt Sting ever loved anyone with wings. If he did he might rethink such a stupid sentiment.I suppose the point is to wait for your love to come back to you voluntarily.I wonder if there’s a difference between setting something free and letting it go?I probably did it wrong.I should stop taking advice from my radio.I worry that you’re lost.I keep a heart-shaped cage unlocked for you, out on the street where it can easily be seen.So if one day you return at least you’ll have a place to stay.”