Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.

I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.

I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.

This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.