“There is not a name for what I'm feeling. There is no description for it.To call it yearning would be like calling the ocean water.Whatever this thing is, it shoves you inside itself and you can't measure its boundaries because they go too far and you don't have enough time. Or you move toward the boundaries and they move away.There has been an earthquake in my life.Catastrophic, civilization-ending.”

“If you want to call yourself my friend, you should know that position comes with boundaries." Sabine frowned. "I'm no good with boundaries." "Yes, and the ocean is damp. Can we be done with the understatements now?”

“You hate America, don't you?'That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”

“Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?”

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”

“To call it yearning would be like calling the ocean water.”