“They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.”

“Life and death were so unpredictable. So close to each other. We existed moment to moment, never knowing who would be the next to leave this world.”

“They prefer death to peace, others prefer death to war. Any opinion can be preferred to life, which it seems so natural to love dearly.”

“The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ”

“people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.”

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”