“Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.”

“New but…good,” Evan said, shaking his head. “A good thing.” Helena caught the look that passed between the two men and it was beautiful…the only word she could think of was beautiful. It was love and lust and such a tender expression of care she wondered if they had any clue how lovely it was to see...”

“There are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.”

“He learned, though slowly, what all great harrowed lovers learn: that love is what most surely compels love -- is perhaps, except for brute force, the only thing that does, though only (and this was the terrible gift he had been given) when the lover truly believes, as August could, that when his love is strong enough it must surely be returned -- and August's was.”

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

“We perhaps need to snatch happiness in little pieces, learning to recognize the elements of happiness and then treasuring them while they last.”