“When it comes to men, deal with them as they are, not how you’d like them to be.”

“After all, my erstwhile dear,My no longer cherished,Need we say it was not love,Just because it perished?”

“Half the night I waste in sighs,Half in dreams I sorrow afterThe delight of early skies;In a wakeful dose I sorrowFor the hand, the lips, the eyes,For the meeting of the morrow,The delight of happy laughter,The delight of low replies.”

“Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.”

“But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow.”

“Nobody ever gets what they want when it comes to love.”

“A weed is but an unloved flower.”

“I… What are you saying, Zsadist?” she stammered, even though she’d heard every word.He glanced back down at the pencil in his hand and then turned to the table. Flipping the spiral notebook to a new page, he bent way over and labored on top of the paper for quite a while. Then he ripped the sheet free.His hand was shaking as he held it out. “It’s messy.”Bella took the paper. In a child’s uneven block letters there were three words: I LOVE YOUHer lips flattened tight as her eyes stung. The handwriting got wavy and then disappeared. “Maybe you can’t read it,” he said in a small voice. “I can do it over.” She shook her head. “I can read it just fine. It’s… beautiful.””I don’t expect anything back. I mean… I know that you don’t… feel that for me anymore. But I wanted you to know. It’s important that you knew.”

“Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”

“Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.”

“A woman should soften but not weaken a man.”

“Two things you will never have to chase: True friends & true love.”

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

“The Universe is very, very big.It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.”

“I think everything that happened in Idris-Valentine, Max, Hodge, even Sebastian-I kept shoving it all down, trying to forget, but it’s catching up with me. I… I’ll get help. I’ll get better. I promise.” “You promise.””I swear on the Angel.” He ducked his head down, kissed her cheek.”The hell with that. I swear on us.”