“There were two now where they had been three. David's death had dismantled the triangle, and an enclosed space was now open. Two points are unreliable; with nothing to anchor them, there is nothing to stop them drifting in opposite directions. If it is string that binds, it will eventually snap and the points will separate; if elastic, they will continue to part, further and further, until the strain reaches its limit and they are pulled back with such speed that they cannot help but collide with devastating force.”

“Love affairs, in their beginnings, are all about the present. But there is a point in each--an event, an exchange, some other unseen trigger--which forces the past and the future back into focus.”

“Round and round the questions flew, until finally I found myself standing at the open door of a bookshop. It’s natural in times of great perplexity, I think, to seek out the familiar, and the high shelves and long rows of neatly lined-up spines were immensely reassuring. Amid the smell of ink and binding, the dusty motes in beams of strained sunlight, the embrace of warm, tranquil air, I felt that I could breathe more easily.”

“For the perfect gentleman was out there somewhere, waiting for her. He would be nothing like Father, he would be an artist, with an artist's sense of beauty and possibility, who didn't care two whits about bricks and bugs. Who was open and easy to read, whose passions and dreams brought light to his eyes. And he would love her, and only her.”

“His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.”

“Gerry?' Laurel had to strain to hear thought the noise on the other end of the line. 'Gerry? Where are you?''London. A phone booth on Fleet Street.''The city still has working phone booths?''It would appear so. Unless this is the Tardis, in which case I'm in serious trouble.”

“Ever since Eliza had discovered the book of fairy tales . . . had disappeared inside its faded pages, she'd understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people.”