“Surely this is what death would be like: nothingness, oblivion, as the world continued to turn, heedless of her absence.”

“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.”

“Death: I know, or I think I know that death will only be nothingness, but I don’t want oblivion yet. I want to smell honeysuckle in the dark, I want to hear my cat greet me with her special purring. I want to smell old books”

“Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.”

“Never let the meaning of your love light escape to the dark nothingness of oblivion.”

“The townsfolk would assume, from this day forward, that Klara's death had turned a gentle man bitter and hard, but the truth, Vaclav knew, was that her absence only rendered him, again, the man he'd been before he'd met her, one only her proximity had ever softened”