“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.”

“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”

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

“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.”

“There are no shortcuts, in life or in love. This pain must be felt. The alternative is much worse. It's what makes us special, what makes us beautiful, what, what makes us worthy; the pain of how we love. But that pain is accompanied by something else, isn't it? Hope. With your pain, there is hope. And that is where you are. Somewhere between agony and optimism and prayer. So you're human. You're alive. And that is what we have.”

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