“Oh there once was a womanand she kept a shopselling trinkets to touristsnot far from a dockwho came to see what life could befar back on the island.And it was always a party therealways different but very niceNew friends to give you adviceor fall in love with you which is niceand each grew so perfectly from the otherit was a marvel of poetryand irony”

“There are some people in your life who bring back old memories. And there are others - your first kiss, your first love, your first sex - who, the moment you see them, bring a spark...and something far more potent. They bring back your old life and with that, potential. And possibilities. And the feeling that if you were back in that time, life could be so very different from where you're stuck right now. That's the most tantalizing thing....I want my potential back.”

“It was really rather wretched that you couldn’t will yourself to fall in love, for the very effort can keep falling at bay. Nor could you will yourself to stay that way. Least of all could you will yourself NOT to fall in love, for thus far whatever meager resistance she had put up had only made the compulsion more intense. So you were perpetually tyrannized by a feeling that came and went as it pleased, like a cat with its own pet door. How much more agreeable, if love were something that you stirred up from a reliable recipe, or elected, however perversely, to pour down the drain. Still, there was nothing for it. The popular expression notwithstanding, love was not something you made. Nor could you dispose of the stuff once manifested because it was inconvenient, or even because it was wicked, and ruining your life, and, by the by, someone else’s.”

“Oh, dear." She let her head fall back to the pillow. "There it went. I've fallen in love with you now.""Just now?" Chuckling, he came to a sitting position, resting his forearm on one bent knee. "Well, thank God for belated blessings." He ran a handthrough his hair. "It's been coming on rather longer than that for me.""What?" She sat bolt upright. "What can you mean? Since when?""From the first, Amelia. From the very first.”

“Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be...”

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”