"'Well I woke up this morning

and diagnosed a very early case of happiness.

'Never heard of it,' he says.

'It's a rare disease. I caught it just before the neighbors woke.'

'Is it contagious?'

'Don't you have it yet?'

...I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite possibly losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again."
-Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann