I thought it would not hurt to remind you that love is a powerful force in this world, invisible though it seems.

He looked down at his empty glass. "One of the other ways in which I am different from my father," he said. "I am not interested in marrying where I do not love." I spoke in a jesting voice. "And of all the women in the eight provinces, you have not been able to find one you could love?" Now he looked at me again, and his face was completely serious. "That's the problem," he said. "There is one.

For the world slows and the stars falter, and all that remains is you.

Do you love me?" he asked. I fell silent. "For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.

I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way.

Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.

Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.