“She's had so little love, Jesse thought, I will drown her in it for the rest of her life.”

“Dylan - "A mermaid found a swimming ladPicked him for her ownPresses her body to his bodyLaughed; and plunging down,Forgot in cruel happinessThat even lovers drown."Jess - "I thought mermaids were supposed to SAVE men."Dylan - "They are, but sometimes a guy doesn't mind drowning.”

“Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.”

“That was it. She came out of it. She never had such a down as that or such an up as the three days that preceded it, not ever again in her life. The rest of her life was like a long thin line with little diminuendos and tiny little crescendos, and friends visiting from out of town.”

“Love meant something to her, she dreamt of it, thought of it, wrote of it. It was the one thing in life that had eluded her completely.”

“That Sindy. She was so damn smart. But I never told her that. I also never told her that I loved her, or that I loved the two little stretch marks she got from carrying Vera. Or that I loved that freckle on her forehead. I never told her that I loved her lasagna or that I thought her views on politics were clever. I just kept my mouth shut because I thought that made me safe.”