“The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.”

“He pauses, and I know he is about to lie. The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.”

“Because you can't be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world's sweetest cancer.”

“Camille?" Her voice quiet and girlish and unsure. "You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don't, they're so numb they won't feel anything?""Mmm.""What if it's the opposite?" Amma whispered. "What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn that switch off except hurting? What does that mean?"I pretended to be asleep. I pretended not to feel her fingers tracing vanish over and over on the back of my neck.”

“My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?' He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you.But he said, 'Because I feel sorry for you.' 'Why?' 'Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

“It's not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It's an admirable thing, and I'm glad you're both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you'd never done it. And those will be the good times, when it's only days of regret and not months.”

“You are a man. You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that's what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam. But I made you into something. You were the best man you've ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you've ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like.”