“One could pick apart love, examine every filament of attraction, and still it would never be fully explained.It simply was.”

“We could liberate a million trophies. We could fill every river to the brim. But it would never fully substitute for liberating ourselves.”

“We were so wholly one I had not thoughtThat we could die apart. I had not thoughtThat I could move,—and you be stiff and still!That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb!I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woofIn some firm fabric, woven in and out;Your golden filaments in fair designAcross my duller fibre.”

“In that moment of recognition he is not consumed by a rushing sensation of love-quite simply a door opens to a room that has never gone away. The years apart were just years without one another.”

“Only a few months into our marriage," writes the grandfather, "we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist.”

“A filament of sensation sizzled between them, like a thin string of kerosene that, for the love of a match, could turn into a wall of fire.”