People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.

Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't matter.

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.

One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.