“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.”

“There is too much emphasis on being positive, to the detriment of being real.”

“Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness.”

“When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms.”

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didnt understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can...”

“Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing I could never have him.”

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”