“He is afraid, as suddenly he knows that he was afraid all along, that if he felt her body so close to him he would never let her go.”

“You are so beautiful,” he breathed. Standing over her, rampant in the moonlight, he gazed down at her body. “You are as lovely and as perfect as I imagined you would be.”Afraid to believe, afraid to trust, she dared a look at him and felt her heart wrench when she read his expression and understood that she truly was whole and beautiful in his eyes. She was a magnificent to him as he was to her.”

“When she was younger, she felt that he wanted to know everything about her, but she was sometimes afraid to tell too much. She was afraid he would know her too well, that he would find some weakness in her, some element that would turn him away, maybe even a quality she didn't even realize she possessed.”

“He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having quarreled in Paris before he had gone out. He had whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her, the first one, the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able to kill it . . . . How when he thought he saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go all faint and sick inside, and that he would follow a woman that looked like her in some way, along the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept with had only made him miss her more. How what she had done could never matter since he could never cure himself of loving her.”

“In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.”

“Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending that he’s involved. He wants it to snow so he won’t have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear.”