"When she came to her senses again she cut off all contact with him. It had not been easy, but she had steeled herself. The last time she saw him she was standing on a platform in the tunnelbana at Gamla Stan and he was sitting in the train on his way downtown. She had stared at him for a whole minute and decided that she did not have a grain of feeling left, because it would have been the same as bleeding to death. Fuck you."

"What I most heartily wish for is, a union between the two countries: by a union I mean something more than a mere word—a union, not of parliaments, but of hearts, affections, and interests—a union of …"

"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly rig…"

"Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading."

"If the light were not in your eyes, dear Mr. Brooks, you would understand better how happy your little Helen was when her teacher explained to her that the best and most beautiful things in the world …"