“He read disappointment at his response and wondered if she realized that she expected a certain amount of effusive sympathy from the people she told. Rejecting that sympathy made her feel strong, compensating for what she perceived as her weakness. He suspected that the disease was the first time she hadn't been able to make everything come out all right through the sheer determination that it would be.”

“She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.”

“No, she can weather his disappointments if she has to, that isn't the problem, she can put up with anything as long as she feels he is solidly with her, but that is precisely what she doesn't feel anymore, and even if he seems content to glide along with her out of old habits, the reflex of old affections, she is becoming ever more certain, no, certain is probably too strong a word for it, she is becoming ever more willing to entertain the idea that he has stopped loving her.”

“Pamela realizes for the first time in her life that she hadn't made the wrong choice at all. Nor had she made the right choice. She had simply made a choice. And somewhere along the way, she had lost the courage to live by it.”

“He’d been right about her determination to save the people she loved. He wondered with a sudden pang he couldn’t identify how it would feel having someone like Antonia on his side.”

“a man would know the women he was meant to be with because she made him weak. Till he claimed her and she made him strong.”