“She wanted to find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how to love them in life.”

“Loving she realises is a verb. It is an act. It is not enough to say you love someone, and then forget about them, or trust a relationship will stay strong simply because you share a house or children or a life.Loving requires acts of love. It requires thinking of your spouse, doing things for them to make them happy. It requires acting in loving ways, even when you are tired, or bogged down with work, or so stressed you are waking up every night with a jaw sore from grinding your teeth.They forgot to do that, she now knows. They forgot to love each other. They expected love to continue, without putting any work into it, and today she knows this is why her marriage failed.”

“Liar," she spat. "Because the only way anyone will ever be okay with me is if they love me. Really love me enought to not care that I'm damaged. You don't love people. You have sex with them. So how could you want to be with me?”

“She now knew that it was possible to love two people at once—because you could love them in different ways.”

“She loved books. She loved them with her senses and her intellect. They way they looked and smelled; the way they felt in her hands; the way the pages seemed to murmur as she turned them. Everything there is in the world, she thought, is in books.”

“Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.”