“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”

“Mother earth cried so much that she has pool of tears more than the land of happiness.”

“Because affection, she had learned, was such a civilized thing, compared to love. It exacted so much less and was therefore more enduring. And endurable.”

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

“She was so much softer then, so much more willing to fall in love, or believe she was.”

“O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,to drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears.”