“I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.”

“She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.”

“We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.”

“Though she'd try to do otherwise, she had never been able to stop cluttering her present with her past. Now somebody she didn't know would pack her treasures into plastic bags and carry them away. A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken - are allowed to stay behind.”

“Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.”

“Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.”

“There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world.”