1
" I see the process of reaching out, sharing yourself, communicating, establishing contact between two people as similar to, if not the same as, the interaction between two people entering a relationship in literature – that is, as reader and writer. Both seem to have the same astounding possibilities and the same terrible pitfalls. But if you battle through and souls touch, magic happens. Love. We feel more human, more alive, more understood, naked and yet protected from the cold of isolation and indifference. Our loneliness is, temporarily, held at bay. "
― , The Fifth Mrs Brink: A Memoir
2
" This is what I always said to André: you never know. You never know what the future may bring. I just knew that whatever time we had together, whether one year or thirty-four, I wanted it. I wanted him. Regardless of the consequences. When a love like that comes your way, you grab, hold, cherish it – you live it. You don’t allow it to pass by. It is rare and precious. If you are lucky, you’ll have it once in a lifetime. Will I be allowed to live it twice? I doubt it, even if I wish it were possible. Periodically, I sit quietly and stare into space and understand that I am only forty, and it is behind me. "
― , The Fifth Mrs Brink: A Memoir
5
" André read me even when I was silent. He saw all of me, and he still wanted me. He thought I was beautiful. It was not only something he said, often; it was in his eyes when he watched me undress, whether I was filthy and tired after an afternoon’s work in the garden, or had seduction on my mind. It was in the way he moved around me, considerate and proud, both in public and in private. Or in the way he touched me, as if I were a precious piece of art. He was the only one who could make my body lose itself completely in someone else’s caresses. With him I could let go, fall, and rise again on waves of desire, unafraid of exposing myself at my most vulnerable where the mind trips over the edge of lust and throws the body into the depths of fulfilment. "
― , The Fifth Mrs Brink: A Memoir
