“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyon...”

“A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.”

“Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”

“It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.”

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

“Ah, sweetie. If the poets couldnt unriddle them, then you certainly cant. Be kind, and keep your ears on offer if she wants to talk. But you cant draw out the strangeness, Edgar. Its not a poison.”

“With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be therenot always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.”

“Unfortunately, he still hadnt asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low.”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”