“...the summer of the gypsy moths when all the trees in their yard were bare, the leaves chewed by caterpillars. You could hear crunching in the night. You could see silvery cocoon webbing in porch rafter and strung across stop signs.”

“Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough.”

“You had to wonder who all these people in their cars were leaving behind and who they were driving toward, and if they knew that in the distance, the echo of their tires on the asphalt sounded like a river, and that to someone like me, it could seem like the miracle I'd been looking for.”

“All this kissing was making her crazy; it was reminding her of what she could feel, and how it could be when you wanted someone as much as he wanted you.”

“As they were falling asleep, Gillian could have sworn she heard Ben say Fate--as if they were meant to be together from the start and every single thing they'd ever done in their lives had been leading to this moment. If you thought that way, you could fall asleep without regret. You could put your whole life in place, with all the sadness and the sorrow, and still feel that at last you had everything you ever wanted. In spite of the lousy odds and all the wrong turns, you might actually discover that you were the one who'd won.”

“Fate could twist you around and around if you weren't careful. Just when you thought you knew where you were headed, you'd wind up in the opposite direction, or flattened against a wall.”

“She had been grief stricken as her father lay dying but now she felt weightless, the way people do when they're no longer sure they have a reason to be connected to this world. The slightest breeze could have carried her away, into the night sky, across the universe.”