“She needed him to be him. Even if he could not be hers.”

“He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.”

“There was no denying she could get him all hot and bothered, but she could also soothe him with a look, make him laugh when he felt like crying, and more importantly, he knew she would be there when he needed her to.”

“She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways.Ways that made him believe that he could do anything.Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.”

“An unspoken rivalry threaded their relationship, in which Tiger Lily thought that if she could keep up with him, she could hold tighter to him. It didn't occur to her there was anything in which Peter would want her to fail. But sometimes, I could see that, even for him, she was too fast, too sure-footed, and didn't seem to need him quite enough.”

“She had seemed to need something from him that he hadn’t been able to give...at last he realized that what she had needed from him was need itself. That he should need her as she needed him.”