“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”

“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again.""Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?""Yes. I want to ruin you.""Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

“I had an inheritance from my father,It was the moon and the sun.And though I roam all over the world,The spending of its never done.”

“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett aga...”

“I didn't want to kiss you goodbye that was the trouble I wanted to kiss you good night and there's a lot of difference.”

“This is so funny, said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. Isnt this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura. I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his ...”

“In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.”

“If you are a boat and your lake is frozen, what can you do? You will wait for the spring! We are lucky that we are humans, we dont have to wait for the spring; we can break the ice if necessary, we...”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to...”

“[C]oncepts of dying in to a heaven or hell seem a good deal more political than spiritual. (124)”

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. ...”