“What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.”

“She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.”

“What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it”

“Just the word beautiful was seductive - but what did it really mean? Beauty was a soft word that ached with possibility, pliant as dough. You could not presume to define it, she realized, because the very idea of beauty and all it represented was a subjective thing - in the eye of the beholder - but that wasn't really true anymore.”

“You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?”

“She had no experience of crushing on someone like that. She hadn't realized before how frightening it was to look a dream in the face. To realize how much it could change you live, and how much it could demand of you.”