Nicole Krauss

"He was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around him, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a man would have been impossible without him. If it weren't for him, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

Nicole Krauss

Jodi Picoult

"I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same."

Jodi Picoult

G.K. Chesterton

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."

G.K. Chesterton

Matthew Sturges

"It’s the longing that ultimately undoes you. When it finds you, it gnaws at your bones and tugs at your chest. It fills you up inside and makes you dream dreams and then it drowns you. It keeps you in bed, clutching at your sheets while the world goes on outside. It smells like old leaves and cigarette smoke, mixed with the scent of far-off places you will hear of, but never see. It’s the gloss on a lover’s lips the moment you realize you will never actually kiss them. It is the bittersweet, unrequited love of creation and it will break your heart again and again and again. If you know the longing the way I do, then these words are redundant. We understand each other perfectly, you and I."

Matthew Sturges