Alice LaPlante

“When thinking over one's life, it's the extreme moments that stand out. The peaks and the valleys. He was one of the highest peaks. In some ways looming larger than James. If James was a central mountain in the landscape of my life, then this other was a pinnacle of a different sort. Higher, sharper. You couldn't build upon its fragile precipices. But the view was spectacular.”

“You learn, you grieve, you forgive, or at least you accept.”

“People think it's just forgetting your keys, she says. Or the words for things. But there are the personality changes. The mood swings. Thehostility and even violence. Even from the gentlest person in the world. You lose the person you love. And you are left with the shell... And you are expected to go on loving them even when they are no longer there. You are supposed to be loyal. It’s notthat other people expect it. It’s that you expect it of yourself. And you long for it to be over soon.”

“Yes, Halloween excites me. That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption cliches of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.”

“the secret of happy marriage: not honesty, not forgiveness, but acceptance that is a kind of respect for the other's right to make mistakes.”