“You couldn’t love someone the way he had loved her and then be turned off them in five minutes by nothing more than lies and daydreams. Could you? Could you?”

“You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives”

“Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct ad had nothing at all to give.”

“He couldn’t just come right out with it, could he? No, that would scare her off. He had to be subtle, build up to it. Explain himself. “I love you.” Of course, straight to the point was also an effective strategy.”

“But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it.”

“The point, dear Davis, is that sometimes what you want is nothing more than to put your name beside someone else's, someone whom you love. Stretch your name out alongside theirs as though it was you, lying next to them.”