Why should I tell you?" he asked, with no small amount of petulance. "If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

Everyone on this island wants something kept quiet. I want to roar

The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game

How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed...connection?

What I’m sorry about is not being a tipsy idiot when you found me. I’m sorry about that, obviously, but more sorry that my stupidity caused us to lose a great opportunity. I don’t imagine you would have met me and fallen crazy in love with me, but I would like to think that if you’d had a chance to meet me under different circumstances, something just as nice could have happened. We could have become friends.

Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.

Listen to me: I never married because I was too easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It's much better to be too easily interested.