“There will be another betrothal, another Mathilda. You speak of only a respite, and my heart can take just so many such partings before it breaks forever. You are proof enough that each of us lives several lives before we perish. There is wisdom in accepting when one ends and another begins. i love you, Addis. I always will. But there is no place for me in the life you have now.”

“We can talk about our dreams all night, Lisette. We can talk forever, for the rest of our lives, living one adventure after another, I promise. But not now, my darling Lisette. For now, all I can think of is the brilliance of yet another ancient Greek, Sophocles. He said, 'One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life-that word is love.' I love you, Lisette. You bring my life joy I've never known. Please, marry me.”

“Listen and I’ll tell you what akri once told me. We have three kinds of family. Those we are born to, those who are born to us, and those we let into our hearts. I have let you into my heart so the Simi is your family and she won’t give you up. If you are sad right now, then I’m thinking your family is still in your heart too, and they are taking up so much room that you have no room for anyone else. (Simi)I can’t give them up. (Gallagher)And you shouldn’t. Ever. No one should ever forget those they love. But it’s like with QVC – whenever I fill up my room with too much stuff, akri builds me another room. Somehow there’s always space for more. Your heart can always expand to take in as many people as you need it to. The people who live there, they don’t go away. You just make room for one more person and then another and another and another. (Simi)”

“Sometimes you want to say, “I love you, but…”Yet the “but” takes away the ‘I love you’. In love their are no ‘buts’ or ‘if’s’ or ‘when’. It’s just there, and always. No beginning, no end. It’s the condition-less state of the heart. Not a feeling that comes and goes at the whim of the emotions. It is there in our heart, a part of our heart…eventually grafting itself into each limb and cell of our bodies. Love changes our brain, the way we move and talk. Love lives in our spirit and graces us with its presence each day, until death.To say “I love you, but….” is to say, “I did not love you at all”.I say this to you now: I love you, with no beginning, no end. I love you as you have become an extra necessary organ in my body. I love you as only a girl could love a boy. Without fear. Without expectations. Wanting nothing in return, except that you allow me to keep you here in my heart, that I may always know your strength, your eyes, and your spirit that gave me freedom and let me fly.”

“If that is wisdom, then I will never be wise. I do not want a life that has no place for you in it. You will come back with me and take the place that is yours in my heart. No obligations to the past stand in the way. We will marry. ---Addis de Valence”

“There are only two ways to live your life. One as if all that matters is to have someone love and accept you. The other is as though loving and accepting another person is all that matters. Often, when you choose the second you get the first.”