This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel.

I knew that I could hate him all I wanted for the way he was hurting me, but I couldn’t ever stop loving him, absolutely, for what he was.

And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?

People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He stopped believing.

The very rich only admire themselves

But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.

But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.