“I left this morning saying ‘I love you’as if setting out for some unknown countryinstead of the corner shop. I wantedyou to be sure, in casethis time - out of, say, 10,000 departuresI never made it back: althoughafter 50 years together, 2 countries,3 children, and several former journeysthat would put this one to shameyou’d think there’d be no need to pauseon my own doorstep, suddenly afraidof the distance between us, of your absolute beauty,of the growing aloneness when I clicked the latch.”

“This, my children," Alistair said proudly, "was barbecue pork."Dan rapped his fingers against the latch. "Been out in the sun for a long time.”

“I resisted the temptation to turn around and stick out my tongue in derision at Beliquose. After all, there was no telling when or if we should meet again, and I certainly did not need him saying, 'Ah yes, Poe, the fellow whose trespasses i could have forgiven in their entirety... except for the tongue thing. Yes, for that, you must surely die.”

“You are my daughter. I would love you if you put out the sun.”

“There is an old saying that there is no country as unhappy as one that need heroes."(King Pelles the Sure)”

“Just for future reference, don't use words like "love" anymore. It's a very sensitive word and it wears out quickly. Romeo barely says it, but John Hinckley filled up a whole journal with it. To put it into your terms, it's a currency that's easily devalued. Pretty soon you're saying it whenever you hang up the phone or whenever you leave. It turns into an apology. Then it's an excuse. Some assholes want it to be a bulletproof vest: don't hate me; I love you. But mostly it just means--more. More, more--give me something more. A couple of years from now, when you're on your own completely, if you really fall in love, if it really comes to that--and I pity you if it does--you have to look right down into the black of her eyes, right down into the emptiness in there and feel everything, absolutely everything she needs and you have to be willing to drown in it, Kevin. You'd have to want to be crushed, buried alive. Because that's what real love feels like--choking. They used to bury some women in their wedding dresses, you know. I thought it was because all those husbands were too cheap to spring for another gown, but now it makes sense: love is your first foot in the grave. That's why the second most abused word is "forever".”

“I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! ’Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it...”