“When words, half love, all tenderness,Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken,When the long, sunny days of blissOnly by moonlight nights were broken.”

“What is she writing? Watch her now,How fast her fingers move!How eagerly her youthful browIs bent in thought above!Her long curls, drooping, shade the light,She puts them quick aside.”

“How strange this mass of ancient treasuresMementoes of past pains and pleasures;These volumes, clasped with costly stone,With print all faded, gilding gone”

“You ask if she had beauty's grace? I know not - but a nobler faceMy eyes have seldom seen;A keen and fine intelligence,And, better still, the truest senseWere in her sparkling mien.”

“Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well,let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put.”

“And then I met the most wonderful boy in the world. We would take long walks by the river. We spent hours gazing into each others eyes. We were so very much in love. And then one day, he went away. And I thought I'd die, but I didn't. And when I didn't, I said to myself... is that all there is to love?”

“I know only that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing.”