“The first thing she told me after I hit on her was that she had a boyfriend of nine months, and I thought, what kind of sick bitch dates infants?”

“In those early days of our relationship though, I always thought that she was so perfect that there had to be a catch. But there wasn't one. Five months and two days after our very first meeting, we were engaged and nine months after that we were married. And every day that I spent on this planet in the company of Ashling, I experienced the same sense of euphoria that I had tasted on our first date. I experienced something that in its simplest form can only be described as true love.”

“The strange thing; her face, after she hit me. She was in greater pain than I. You could see it in her eyes - like she had been violated in some way that broke her own image.”

“For her first summer vacation, my sister went to California with a couple of friends on a package tour put together by her agency. One of the members of the tour group was a computer engineer a year her senior, and she started dating him when they came back to Japan. This kind of thing happens all the time, but it's not for me. First of all, I hate package tours, and the thought of getting serious about somebody you meet in a group like that makes me sick.”

“She asked me what was wrong, and I told her I had to end it. She was surprised, and asked my why I thought so. I told her it wasn't a thought, more a feeling, like I couldn't breathe and knew I had to get some air. It was a survival instinct, I told her.She said it was time for dinner. Then she sat me down and told me not to worry. She said moments like this were like waking up in the middle of the night: You're scared, your'e disoriented, and you're completely convinced you're right. But then you stay awake a little longer and you realize things aren't as fearful as they seem.”

“So I told her that I loved her, not for telling me the thing she had told me, but for the courage involved in telling something like it, something that sad.”