“Pen realized it: Sometimes there is nothing to do but surrender yourself to wonder... You must stop measuring - over and over - the line between loving and being in love. You must offer yourself, whole, to the cobalt starfish (and the orange one and the pale pink one and the biscuit-colored one with the raised, chocolate-brown art deco design) and to the clear, clear water and to the sweep of shining sky and to the silver scattershot of leaping fish (an entire school skipping across the ocean like a stone.)”

“I don’t think love is blind, true love is probably the most clear-eyed state of being there is.’‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe with true love, you see and you love anyway…”

“The sight made her ache. How can I not touch you? she thought hopelessly, and then she was doing it, her fingers on his wrist. He didn't jump or even look at her, just stopped writing. Neither one of them moved, nothing moved, and the whole thing lasted three or four seconds at most, but when Pen took her hand away and started to breathe again, her chest hurt, as though she had been holding her breath for a very long time.”

“Yes, it’s true, what I said earlier: A real life doesn’t mean geting what you want; the achievement, the privilege, too, is knowing what you love.But getting what you love? Having what you love love you back? Oh, my friend, it’s miracle: your one tiny life’s head-on collision with divinity. ”

“Honestly, William, time?' his mother had snapped. 'Distance? Those things have nothing whatsoever to do with love. Who knows that better than you?”

“We were friends. It was as big a deal as being in love.” She tried to think of a way to make Amelie understand. “It was a revelation, being friends like that. God, it was holy to me. But it wasn’t being in love.”

“Magic can happen in a car, a warm, intimate magic born of being in an enclosed, particular place and, simultaneously, being nowhere, passing throu. No one leaves her troubles behind, not really, but you can believe you have. You can believe you're in an inbetween space where trouble can't find you. . . .”