"It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."

"It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays."

"I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me."

"There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love."

"Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something."

"There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world."

"I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret."

"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"

"‎I never wanted to have anything in my life that I couldn't stand losing. But it's too late for that."

"Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you."

"Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment."

"I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence?"

"Why is love intensified by absence?"

"It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."

"It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays."

"I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me."

"There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love."

"Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something."

"There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world."

"I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret."

"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"

"Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something."