“Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.”

“The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight,the weight we carry is love. ”

“The thought of gaining weight was all she needed to lose her appetite completely. Not that Jessica – a model-slim, perfect size-six – ever had to worry about her weight.”

“In this town of towheaded drunks, [his daughter] would bear the weight of her difference, doled out in murmurs, taunts, and shoves. But now it occurred to Victor that she would suffer more than he ever had because, unlike him, she had been loved, and her punishment would come as a surprise.”

“It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”

“There are none among us who have not been, even for a moment, cruel to those whom we love most, as if unable, in that moment, to shoulder any longer the magnificent weight and burden, the responsibility, of that love.”