“There were so many secrets between us now, it was hard remembering a time when things had been simple & easy, when it had felt like pure puppy love. I suppose all love eventually comes back down to earth.”

“If she’d ever had any doubts that she loved him, really loved him, she knew now. It was easy to love somebody when love was happy, but when it was hard, when it meant facing things you feared...that was different. He’d done it for her, many times. And now she had to do it for him.”

“I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time--like somehow we were letting the side down.”

“Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.”

“Never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.”

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”