“He’s exactly what she wants. He’s the last thing she needs.”

“What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.”

“She says she doesn’t know what to do! But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can’t.”

“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.”

“…She had the rare ability to be exactly what people needed when she was with them and yet still remain true to herself.”

“Kindness was the last thing she needed. She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold.”

“She wanted to test her husband.
She knew exactly what to do:
A pseudonym to fool him.
She couldn't have made a worse move.”

“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!”

“This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.”

“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.”