“Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.”

“When I met her, I saw her as someone else who needed saving but she had saved me. She had given me hope when I had given up on everything in my life.”

“Pam wasn't what Gloria would have called a friend, just someone she had known for so long that she had given up trying to get rid of her.”

“She could see the name Fukamachi on a shiny name-plate by the door of the house, but it was a name that meant nothing to Kazuko. And at that moment, in her heart, she began to dream of meeting someone. Someone special who would one day walk into her life. Someone she would instantly feel she had known for years. Someone who would feel the same about her.”

“The truth was that although my grandma loves us and we loved her, the courage to love someone new, someone she had no hand in creating had been razed from her, torn from its roots, burned and hacked from every follicle, every pore. So she was scared to love. Because she didn't think she could handle it. Because what would she do or become if love was stripped from her once more?”

“She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.”