Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain. (Chapter 1)

No one ever thought that a marriage rooted in such foundations could have any reason not to be happy. (Chapter 1)

They had just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, and they were not capable of living for even an instant without the other, or without thinking about the other, and that capacity diminished as their age increased. (Chapter 1)

All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera. (Chapter 2)

She felt the heavy weight of the time they had lost while she was away, she felt how hard it was to be alive and how much love she was going to need to love her... (Chapter 2)