“Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”

“Her shut-eyed smile transformed itself into something else: the smile of someone brave and knowing, someone whose pain had made her wise.”

“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”

“People had always amazed him, he began. But they amazed him more since the sickness. For as long as the two of them had been together, he said, Garys mother had accepted him as her sons lover, had ...”

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.”

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to ...”

“Babies are the buds of life ready to bloom like a fresh flower to refresh humanity.”

“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”

“The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.”

“Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you.”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: youre falling to the floor crying ...”

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”