“I will die, however,” he said quite seriously, “if you leave me again. Just watch me.”

“The one thing she’d been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one’s own prejudices.”

“Her laugh was wonderful. It was mischief made musical.”

“He wished for access to all the world's languages at once, for then he would have a better word for how he felt and what she was.”

“But she bravely kept her eyes open; she was both lost and found in the soft, burning depths of his eyes.”

“Something was stirring in him, though; a bud of comprehension that could very well bloom into forgiveness if left unchecked.”

“I suppose we all tend to want the impossible. And sometimes in attempting it we achieve something near enough to the impossible to elicit satisfaction.”

“But now he understood why someone would write things like 'she walked in beauty like the night' and so forth. Because poetry was a barrier against raw emotions. It distilled them into bearable music, allowed one to accommodate them a little at a time.”

“It isn't a weakness to accept kindness. It isn't a weakness to allow yourself to be cared for.”

“Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught.”

“He leaned in for a sniff. 'Smells like a horse's arse! I've got Ian!' -'No sniffing allowed! We never discussed sniffing! I cry foul!' Ian was outraged. 'I'm not giving you a shilling!' -'Give him a shilling! It's not his fault you smell like a horse's arse!”