“He would not give her up,he could not.For the first time in his life he'd found someone who filled all the empty spaces in his heart”

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

“For the first time, his wife was waking up in his arms...And if he'd known how it would feel to have her there, his heart bursting out of his chest and his throat so full and tight that he couldn't have spoken a word if he'd wanted too, Thom would never have been able to pass a single night away form her. He didn't know how he ever would again.”

“He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn’t able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.”

“Miracle was thinking she'd finally fallen in love, for the first time and maybe the last, with someone who may or may not be around for very long. Hardy was thinking he'd found someone that made his past and his future not matter quite so much, someone who gave him a present that eclipsed everything else. But there was a chance he might lose her. Later, when he kissed her goodnight, it was a kiss full of promise, a kiss that said he'd be around forever, however long forever ended up being.”

“He felt as if he hadn't slept because he spent all night wandering through the world looking for a maiden who bore his heart in her womb. His heart grew in her like a child. He was pregnant with his heart for a long time, for a year, for ten years, for a generation, for a hundred and two years. His heart grew bigger and bigger in her, and she grew bigger and bigger to accomodate the growth of his heart in her womb. He never knew when she would give birth to his heart and he lost her and searched the world over and never found her. His father, the king, told him that the world in which he searched for he was his heart, and that she was the mother of all the world, and that his search was over when it began, but he didn't know it.”