“Among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.”

“I can see us there still," he said, "for those were moments so intense that in a way we will be living them always, while other things are completely forgotten. Yet there is no particular story att...”

“The world is constantly evolving, while the family endeavours to stay the same. Updated, refurbished, modernised, but essentially the same. A house in the landscape, both shelter and prison.”

“I didn't appear to need anyone: I could do it all myself. I could do everything. I was both halves: did that mean I was whole?”

“As it happened I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even of self-definition I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read somethin...”

“So much is lost, he said, in the shipwreck. What remains are fragments, and if you don't hold on to them the sea will take them too.”

“She's the kind of girl who brings you to the moon without you even being aware. The kind of girl you trip in love with, The kind of girl you never forget.”

“Not every story is about a girl who dreams of romance, waiting impatiently and dramatically for a tall, handsome, strong man to fall hopelessly in love with, in the foolish hope that he will protec...”

“But perhaps she has given me the strength and the madness to write about the things that I once desired so long to put against the world.”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The moral of the tale is, don't live for the approval of others. The real you is here to find out the secret of life, not to satisfy someone else's opinion.”

“It's like I'm thirteen again and he's my crush. All I'm aware of in this entire roomful of people is him. Where he is, what he's doing, who he's talking to.”

“Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?''None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.”

“She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.”