“Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he's turned it into hate.”

“Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.”

“When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.”

“I've loved you since the day I stole the atlas for you," Gabriel says, because he thinks I'm asleep.”

“I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.”

“I love Cecily", "whether or not you believe it. Not in the same way I loved Rose, or you. But what should that matter? I've loved all my wives differently.”

“Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love."He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says.”