“I think you just want to be in love because you think it's supposed to happen now. But love doesn't happen on schedule. It sneaks up when you least expect it. You can't plug it in into that little day planner of yours. You can't make it happen.”

“But why me?Because, idiot, you... are funny and smart and you have a giant heart that you can't even pretend to hide. And you love your friends and your mum, and you held my hand and made me sing when I was so scared I thought I was going to die. I knew you understood, right from the beginning, this thing inside, the stuff in your head that you need to make real. You get that.... And you wear stupid Superman pyjamas without any irony, and your face lights up when you talk about the movies you love.... And... you protect my dwarf. You always have her back. And you have a dimple when you smile that's so cute I almost died the first time I saw it.”

“Love doesn't follow a schedule - it just shows up, usually when you least want it to.”

“My theory was that if you had breasts, boys wanted to have sex with you, which wasn't exactly a big compliment, since they wanted to have sex any way. Whereas if you had a beautiful face, like Julia, boys fell in love with you, which seemed to happen against their will. Then the sex that you had would be about love.”

“I think you're the kind of man a girl can count on. You just can't let go of losing your family. You can't let yourself love because you think your heart can't handle it . . . that something bad will happen. But you're wrong. It's true . . . grief is the price for love. But hearts are made to mend. Christ can do wonders with a broken heart, if given all the pieces.”

“That's what happens when you're the good guys; you let love get in the way.”

“It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”