“He loved her. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”
“admit it, man. He watched the shadows dance to the flicker of his candle, giving himself just a little more time before committing himself to what would change his life forever." You love her." He whispered the words quietly to himself so that he could hear them from his own lips." You love her.”
“Of this he was certain: to be in her presence was to know delight in a more vivid sense than ever he had before.”
“Your move should be determined by your strengths, not your opponent's expectations.' Darcy's smile deepened as he warmed to her allusion to fencing. 'Always move to your advantage.”
“Very comforting, that-choosing your truth. Makes life quite tolerable when lived on such terms, does it not? Well, at least for a bit.... Until one brushes up against another's truth whose fur does not lie in the same direction.”
“But the bit I liked best was where it said it's impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated.”
“I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is-real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she's right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you're seeing. Complete attention, one of the other..."but in that case," he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, "all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn't it? Looking closely at what's being painted.""The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting, Writing-literature-also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It's the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It's the history of love.”