"She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars."

• Neil Gailman's Stardust

"Richard has improved. You are right," said Sally. "I shall go and talk to him. I shall say good-night. What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"

"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitment?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she was.

• Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

"And it occurred to me, standing there, just breathing with her, quiet settling around us, that those might be the three most beautiful words in the English language.

We have time. "

• Ransom Riggs' Library of Souls

"In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun."

• Madeline Miller's The Song Of Achilles