“She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses,...”

“Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.”

“They weren't smiling and were looking in opposite directions, but it was as if their bodies flowed smoothly into each other's, through their arms and fingers. . . . There was a shared space between...”

“...finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.”

“By now he had learned. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.”

“Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than t...”

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working ...”

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andin spite of True Romance magazineswe shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do no...”

“I never really understood the word loneliness. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature.”

“The scariest thing about distance is that you dont know whether theyll miss you or forget you.”

“I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.”

“A week feels like a year when youre seventeen and in love. A twenty minute drive might as well be an ocean. But we were together again and the whole world was rejoicing, even the gravel crunched me...”

“The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.”

“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”