“But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.”

“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.”

“Oh, I used to lie all the time as a kid." I didn't think of it as lying, though. I thought of it as playing make-believe. I told Kitty she was adopted and her real family was in a traveling circus. It's why she took up gymnastics.”

“In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.”

“I do not want to see that girl again:
I did not like her: and I should not mind
If she were done away with, killed, or ploughed.
She did not seem to serve a useful end :
And certainly she was not beautiful.”

“She was everything I wanted. She was beautiful and charming, with a quick sense of humor, and she supported me in everything I did.”

“He wanted to shake her until every one of her chattering teeth hit the ground. "What the hell are you trying to say? Why did she choose me?"
Jodie eyed him warily. "Because she thinks you're stupid.”

“See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner," "A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could've had you?" "Because when he sings… even the birds stop to listen.”

“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!"”

“But when Anthony kissed her, she felt as
if she were losing her mind. And when he
kissed her twice, she wasn't even sure if she wanted it back!”