“For in any person there is a ball of bitterness and desire, sometimes just lightly tickling like a butterfly, but in many other cases utterly unbearable, like hot coals that scorch everything around them.”

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

“Regrets and apologies are all very well, but there's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. They're like brands.”

“He had that love of life and love of people; he gathered people around him like other people gather butterflies or postage stamps.”

“Alongside the practical thought something else struggled and, like an escaped butterfly, took wing: the assurance of something wonderful awaiting her. Just around the corner……”

“Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.”

“He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoghts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it.”

“I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong… with a spoon in them.”

“Afterward she lies nestled against me, her hair tickling my face. I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin.”