“Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”

“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.”

“All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The ...”

“What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there ...”

“To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken.”

“We should love, not fall in love, because everything that falls, gets broken.”

“Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones who've already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt co...”

“It keeps him happy, Dahlaine, and happy people are nicer than gloomy ones. Haven't you noticed that before?”

“Sometimes a gloomy street is all a sad person needs! A magical relief may arise from the meeting of the two sad things!”

“At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery.”