“She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.”

“Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.”

“And he made love to her, offering his body in both tenderness and anger, unsure which was the best way to pass her bits of his soul so that she could patch her own with it”

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

“He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.”

“He offered her the world. She said she had her own.”

“The President called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke … because he wanted to offer his support to her. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate, personal attacks, and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy. And it was a very good conversation.”

“She alone spoke the truth; to her alone could he speak it. That was the source of her everlasting attraction for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into one's head.”

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”

“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.”