“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”

“He never had really been able to understand what it was that she wanted him for…although he felt certain that she wanted him for something real, that he filled some need for her, as she did for him, which could for lack of a more specific term be called love.”

“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,” he said, “but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”

“He loved her enough to know she was better off without him”

“I never know what to make of Bode Miller because he is crazy. I'm serious. He is so hard to understand. But I know this: When he is on, he is the perfect skier.”

“Do you think she’ll catch him before he gets to the hall?”
“My mom’s spent her whole life chasing me around,” Clary said. “She moves fast.”

“He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.”

“She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.”

“He was a boy, she was girl. Can I make it any more obvious? He was a punk; she did ballet. What more can I say? He wanted her, she'd never tell secretly she wanted him as well. All of her friends stuck up their nose, they had a problem with his baggy clothes. He was a skater boy. She said: 'see you later, boy'. He wasn't good enough for her. She had a pretty face, but her head was up in space. She needed to come back down to Earth!”

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”