“He spoke with complicity, familiarly, as though he knew me; as though his soul and mine had been waiting for each other since the beginning of time.”

“...because he had been waiting for someone to come back to him, so every time someone knocked on the door, he couldn't stop himself from hoping it might be that person, even though he knew he shouldn't hope.”

“Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin.”

“Staring up at me, hearing my tired voice, he reached out his tiny hand. He knew me, even though he had never seen me before. And I knew him. He was the love I'd been trying to express my whole life.”

“He spoke in incomplete sentences, as though he had so much he wanted to say that he needed to leave out some of the words to save time.”

“But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.”