“How horrifying that morning when you wake up and your first thought is not of the person who has left. That’s when you know, I will never die of a broken heart.”

“Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? Youwere Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc tome when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my culturalreferences were the sign of a colonized mind.”

“When you can be this, why are you ever anything else? - Broken Verses”

“They adore you beacause they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true-' He took a deep breath. 'You do ask for something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.”

“How do you eat your roots?”

“Her definition of romance was absentminded intimacy, the way someone else's hand stray to your plate of food.I replied: no, that's just friendship; romance is always knowing exactly where that someone else's hands are. She smiled and said, there was a time I thought that way, too. But at the heart of the romance is the knowledge that those hands may wander off elsewhere, but somehow through luck or destiny or plain blind groping they'll find a way back to you, and maybe you'll be smart enough then to be grateful for everything that's still possible, in spit of your own weaknesses- and his.”

“The next day it's Virginia Woolf who wafts through. Hers is acuriously insistent presence; take your eyes off her for a moment andthe next thing you know she's rearranging your syntax as though itwere cutlery improperly laid out for a seven-course meal with someforeign dignitary who disdains your nation's table manners.”