“For those that were never wounded by love, they will never be able to say: “I lived”. Because they haven’t.”

“I had cooperated. I could not have refused. I was smitten with her, half in love but also afraid, because in my life (and she seemed to know this) I had not loved anyone without having been wounded. Love was power and possession, love caused pain: you were never more exposed than when you were in love, never more wounded; possession was an enslavement, something stifling.”

“I love you, Katie. You might not be ready to say those words now, and maybe you'll never be able to say them, but that doesn't change how I feel about you.”

“There is no greatness in dying for love, Raakha, she wanted to say. Those who die untimely, violent deaths don’t become ashes. They become guilty scars on the flesh of the living. They become wounds that never heal no matter how much time passes.”

“Speech destroys the function of love, I think-that's a hell of a thing for a writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words can close those love bites. it's the other way around, that's the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them.”

“Some people never say the words ‘I love you’. It’s not their style to be so bold. Some people never say those words: ‘I love you’ But, like a child, they’re longing to be told”