“If she'd been lame or a hunchback I'd have probably fallen in love with her even more... Yes, it was a sort of spring fever.”

“Sometimes I really feel sorry for Mel - Her life would've been so much better if she'd fallen in love with someone normal. Instead she fell in love with me and had been paying for the mistake ever since.”

“That night on the Swan we'd promised each other that we'd have some sort of romance. Something unprecedented. "We don't have to be like other people," she'd said, and I'd believed her.”

“He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he'd made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he'd done, but in the next breath tell her she'd deserved it. That if she'd been more careful, it wouldn't have happened. That if she'd been paying attention or hadn't been so stupid, he wouldn't have lost his temper.”

“I had been in love with Ariella. I remembered what she'd meant to me, what I'd felt for her then...... and what I didn't feel for her now.”

“I think you're in love,' she said. And with a sort of shock, Nickie realized it was true. She had definitely fallen in love with Otis. This was being in love, wasn't it? Looking forward to seeing him every day, feeling like a hole was ripped in her heart when he was gone, jumping for joy when he came back, not minding if he smelled bad, wanting to take care of him? Surely it was being in love. It was true that she hadn't fallen in love with...the obvious candidate. She'd fallen in love with a dog instead of a person. But that didn't matter. It was still love. She'd apply it to a person later on.”