“In love - it sounded like a sickness without any cure, and wasn't that just how it sometimes felt?”

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

“I didn't know how to be any other way. I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire.”

“I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”

“Without Mona, Hanna felt like a great outfit without matching accessories, a screw-driver that was all orange juice and no vodka, and an iPod without headphones. She just felt wrong.”

“The primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman is not only a sick man, he is above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself.”

“You're not sick you're just in love.”

“… love given without free will or truthfulness wasn't love at all.”

“We know it's all just daydreaming… But sometimes, it'd be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth.”

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air — moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh — felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”