“My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.”

“I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.”

“I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with...”

“I would always be lonely, but no more alone.”

“Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.”

“Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”

“To be of value to humanity, start by thinking for yourself.”

“Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence.”

“The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon ...”