“True love comes in quietly, without banners or flashing lights. She is your sanity in a world full of madness. True love is not how grand you are or how simple you are, but it's who you are when you're with her and she loves you not in spite of it, but because of it. She is the one who stands with you, when the rest of the world falls down.”

“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.”

“I'm serious. You know that feeling when you're driving in the car and a song you really love comes on the radio and the window is down and you can go a little faster than you should and you feel like everything is yours and the world is beautiful and you're free? That's how I feel when he looks at me.”

“You have what she needs," he said again. "And you're capable of giving her more than she'd ever bargained for because you love her. Wether she wants it or not, it's your gift to her. True love requires no reciprocation. True love is unconditional.”

“How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil?A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!”

“Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face. This is your true self, Tessa. This power is who you are. Whoever loves you now--and you must also love yourself--will love the truth of you.”

“I understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age--that is something worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.”