“She seemed like the kind of woman who would fall in love with the sky.”

“Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a sl...”

“Maybe that was why the French called orgasms las petites morts: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses...”

“Nothing is as deadly as the love of a powerful man.”

“It's true what they say, you know. First fuck. First love. First kill. You never forget your first.”

“Fuck, Christina.Yes, fuck Christina. I think she'd like that.”

“I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.”

“Souls are flowers, only God has the right to pluck them. But those who commit suicide: their souls are the rotten blossoms of devil's garden.”

“We live in a dark and romantic and quite tragic world.”

“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. ...”