“Real love is to offer your life at the feet of another.”

“That's what love looks like. It can happen. Two people can find one another, and then work together to sustain that amorphous, incomprehensible third party that has arisen between them. Love becomes an entity unto itself; the thing that determines how life is to be lived.”

“A new life? There’s not such thing.It was only in the magazine headlines that people got a new life. Stopped drinking or taking drugs, found a new love. But the same life.”

“He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.”

“Sorry I broke your music machine.”

“That's how you should be. Accept your burden and carry it, with joy.”

“This wasn't the way he had expected his life to be. It worked, but that was about all. Happiness had got lost somewhere along the way.”