“My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

“She was my dream. She made me who I am, and holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about her all the time. Even now, when I'm sitting here, I think about her. There could never have been another.”

“To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.”

“As much as I love her, I admit that she has always remained somewhat of an enigma to me…
I liked this about her. I liked the mystery she added to my life. I liked the occasional silence between us, for ours was a comfortable silence. It was a passionate silence, one that had its roots in comfort and desire.”

“Whatever things may be done by one of the lovers to the other, the same should be returned by the other, if she strikes him he should also strike her in return.”

“Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes.
It falls upon her.
Love is like dying.”

“Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!
Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.”

“She warned me about Mr. Herondale, though, said he’d likely be rude to me, and familiar. She said I could be rude right back, that nobody would mind.”

“Someone ought to be rude to him. He’s rude enough to everyone else.”

“You women could make someone fall in love even with a lie.”

“It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.”