What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

The engagement ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing, and I know just the girl to wear them.

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.

Love you..." Henry-" Always..." Oh God oh God-" World enough..." No!" And time..." Henry!

The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.

…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy

The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.