“I had never been the receptacle of someone's hope, and found this weightless thing to be a heavy burden.”

“Helen hadn't realized how heavy the burden of hate had been until she was allowed to put it down.”

“There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.”

“I had been in love before, but never found it necessary.”

“How could you have guessed?” Miserable though Will was, he felt free, as if a heavy burden had been displaced from him. “I did all I could to hide and deny it. You—you never hid your feelings. Looking back, it was clear and plain, and yet I never saw it. I was astonished when Tessa told me that you were engaged. You’ve always been the source in my life of such good things, James. I never thought you would be the source of pain, and so, wrongly, I never thought of your feelings at all. And that is why I was so blind.”

“The thing you hope will never happen to you might just happen to someone else instead, who has been spending their life dreading the thing that will happen to you.”