“Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly”

“The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn't just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she'd always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.”

“She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.”

“She was always saying, 'Fuck this school,' or 'I can't wait until I get out of here.' But so did lots of kids.”

“She had just started living like a grown-up and she'd never felt more vulnerable, frightened or confused in her life.”

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

“Leonard’s being up early constituted a new change in his sleeping patterns, was part of the former change in his sleeping patterns, or indicated a beneficial development. She didn’t know if his perfectionism canceled out his loss of ambition, or if they were two sides of the same coin. When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.”