“Ah, damn it, lass,'he called after her. 'I've busted my stitches wide open.'
'What?'she cried, hurrying back to him. 'Let me see!'
'Ah-ha!' He snared her around the waist, dragging her down with him to his lap.'You still care for me!”

“He stepped closer to her. "Thank you for saving me," he said softly, and wrapped the bones of his arms around her. Valkyrie smiled and hugged him back.”

“He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?”

“For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.”

“She cared about him too much, and he was a dangerous person to love. He wouldn't love her back.”

“Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her.”

“He gripped her nape. "I fuckin' love you, Regin!" Rain spiked his lashes as he gazed down at her, commanding her,
"Love Me Back”

“Don’t you see?” I said. “He could change every detail, but he couldn’t change her.” “But why?” His obtuseness frustrated me. “Because he was in love with her!” I said. “Because, to him, she was the only thing that was real.”

“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”

“Will looking after her, sighed. not for her, he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, for me…. And he leaned his head against the cold iron gate.”