“Maybe love is just hormones or endorphins—not some great force all around us. Maybe that’s just nonsense. It’s always seemed to me that love is about being found—the way you might find your missing cat because you knew he had a notch on his left ear and came to the sound of knew he had a notch on his left ear and came to the sound of pebbles rattling in a can. But maybe that isn’t the way things work. Maybe you can only be “found” for a little while. Just likeJoseph and Isuza LaRonge discovered, “forever” isn’t really forever. Everything ends. Everything is lost eventually.”

“I don't think relationships just end for no reason," Diver said. "Sometimes it's too complicated for us to understand. All these interconnected things have to be just right before you can have love. That's why it's so amazing when it happens. Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising when it doesn't last. Maybe we should just be astounded that it happens at all.”

“It will never be true. Things have never been okay with us. Maybe if I'd paid attention, I would have seen that on our first few dates. Maybe I would have noticed his possessiveness; maybe I would have seen the way he wrapped around me, made me his entire world, his obsession. Maybe I would have felt the wight he placed on my shoulders, one tiny stone at a time.”

“Everyone loved a good reader. And he'd always loved being a great reader - until recently. Maybe it was just part of getting older, or maybe it was being a librarian, or just being here, but lately he'd found he was becoming suspicious of his own love of books. All that reading - it had started to seem wrong, worthless almost, without purpose.”

“And that’s a life, isn’t it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It’s been interesting to me, though I wouldn’t complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand.”

“2If he wasn’t who he said he was, wouldn’t he have been honest with me by now?”

“Because I realize now, that's the way it works. That if you're lucky, you might get to fall in love so hard and so deep, that it changes you. That love seeps its way into every atom and molecule in your whole being, so that even if it's over, or the two of you are forced apart, you'll always carry the imprint of their soul with you, steady as a heartbeat. Forever....”