“Who says all the lines of love are supposed to match up? I'd never thought about it that way before - that maybe your perfect other wasn't everything you already were, but everything you were never going to be.”

“...Maybe it was just the perfect realization to all ones' dreams....where a magic elixir could heal you and make you strong, where men could make roses bloom with the single touch of a thumb, and where the bigger women were, so much the better.”

“Maybe the heavens were a kind of celestial grave, I thought, the way the earth is a repository for our flesh, and when we stared at the stars, we were really beholding a million lives twinkling back at us, asking us not to forget.”

“Death is a kind of guilt in itself. We're all alive in this world together, and we're also all mortal, but when one person pulls his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you'll be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself.”

“But you can't worry about what life's going to spit in your direction.”

“On the face of things, we were hopelessly mismatched, but somehow we fit together perfectly.”

“She never understood that love -- especially that of a child -- was the most necessary weight you can endure in life, even if it hurts, even if it tugs bags under the skin of your eyes. Without it, the soul skitters to the edge of the world and teeters there, confused.”