“When I was nineteen," she said, "I was in love with being in love, I think. And I was given no chance to discover how deep - or not deep - that love would have gone.”

“So you do believe in... true love? she whispered.I took a deep breath, I think I have to, I said, blinking back tears. Without it, we're all going nowhere.”

“Every time I wrote for her, it was like I was courting her, and she would fall in love with me again. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over again?”

“There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.”

“I am glad,” he said. “They will be able to take care of each other when I am gone, or at least I can hope for it. He says she does not love him, but—surely she will come to love him in time. Will is easy to love, and he has given her his whole heart. I can see it. I hope she will not break it.”

“I wish he was mine," he said. The words slipped out without thought, but there was no taking them back..."I love Gus," she said, cutting him deep, deep. "Not only is he my husband, but he is honorable and noble and good, and I vowed before God that I would love him." She made a harsh tearing sound in her throat. "When I saw him that day, when he knocked me over with his bicycle, he was like something out of a dream, my dream." She looked at him, and her eyes glittered like shards of glass. "Oh, God, God, how could I have known, how could I have known? Up until that moment, you see, he was the closest thing I'd found to you.”