Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart?

Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disintegrate. You start with a love story, you end up manacled to an hourglass, watching the sands run out.

I believe his lies, so he believes mine.' She turns and looks at me straight on. 'That's how it goes at the end of love.

It's like when you find out your lover has been unfaithful: in one horrible instant everything she was to you, the whole beautiful enchantment, falls away, and you see her as she really is - mortal, machinating, tethered like everyone else to a little patch of space and time. And the worst of it is that you knew all along.