“Vesper felt herself turning red with humiliation. Then she looked at Allegrareally looked at her. Maybe shed had such a problem with people not seeing her because she wasnt seeing them. Did Allegra...”

“To him, she was one of the few girls who was nice to him, the stodgy son of a poor alcoholic shoemaker with such little status that he seemed unlikely to even get one wife, let alone the three or m...”

“Nim looked aghast. Of course not. Do you think my future wife would be a servant? Noits Number Seven of the wives. Her name is Begonia.Oh, no, Nim, Vesper said. You cant fall for one of the wives! ...”

“For everything about him fitting her fantasy image of what she wanted, she still didnt feel seen by himand that made her all the more aware that maybe her fantasy wasnt what she wanted at all.”

“Happily-ever-after monogamy has been reinforced so steadily in literature that we tend to feel like failures when we dont achieve that in reality.”

“Shed never spoken to anyone before of this business of being seen, loved for who she was; to have it voiced by this man shed just met sent chills down her spine.”

“Souls aren’t discrete units — or even units at all. They’re more like reflections of consciousness in a fractured mirror.”

“Shakespeare, in some sense, helped create the modern man, didn't he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is th...”

“The world is a mirror of ourselves.”

“There is but one reality, that is true -- but the two of you experience it in slightly different ways. The older you get, I should think, the more you will come to understand that the universe is v...”

“I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in mens minds, perhaps f...”

“It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.”

“So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives deligh...”