When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined.

Language is like looking at a map of somewhere. Love is living there and surviving on the land.

It's true the people we meet shape us. But the people we don't meet shape us also, often more because we have imagined them so vividly. There are people we yearn for but never seem to meet.

I wanted to explain that trusting is harder than being trusted.

Everything that we love will, at some point, be taken away from us. If I think about everyone I love eventually being taken away from me by death, or simply by getting lost from each other in the world, it makes me value them much more now. And I'm much less likely to be indifferent. For me, indifference is the end of life.

Should you ever feel too lonely...listen for the roar of the sea- for in it are all those who've been and all those who are to come.

They haven't made love for years but sleep holding hands