Traveling isn't something you're good at. It's something you do. Like breathing.

For the hundredth time tonight, I’m back with Lulu, on Jacques’s barge, the improbably named Viola. She’d just toldme the story of double happiness and we were arguing over the meaning. She’d thought it meant the luck of the boy getting the job and the girl. But I’d disagreed. It was the couplet fitting together, the two halves finding each other. It was love. But maybe we were both wrong, and both right. It’s not either or, not luck or love. Not fate or will. Maybe for double happiness, you need both.

Girlfriend is such a stupid word. I couldn't stand calling her that. So, we had to get married, so I could call her 'wife.

It's ok if you want to stop fighting.

Willem, I suspect deep down you know exactly why you're here, exactly what you want, but you're unwilling to the wanting, let alone the having. Because both of those propositions are terrifying.

I’ve been feeling something else. Like I’m about to be sucked into something powerful and painful.

It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.