“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”

“What are the chances youd ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a wor...”

“The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.”

“It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.”

“My girlfriend is sad and quiet and keeps me up all night worrying about her.”

“Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didnt want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didnt feel so good today.”

“I've never minded it," he went on. "Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not truly be lost if one knew one's own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”