“Just because you made it warm doesn't make it yours”

“He thought of the feeling of receiving oxygen from a mask and the calming sensation it brought, partly because of the concentrated gas but partly too because he could hear his muffled lungs expelling their product within the mask, and it reminded him that he was breathing, that the gas was flowing at all times but most importantly at that moment, a constant and essential truth. His lips and lungs and teeth were witness to the passage of breath.”

“Why does the rain make us feel so romantic and strange? Maybe it's the fact that we are unnatural spectators of it, from inside our homes, and it is a reminder that we have the power to live our whole lives like this, if we choose. It's not the smell of fertile ground kicked up by raindrops, or the slick leaves, or the way we must amplify our voices to be heard over this larger presence. It's the power of the rooftop that makes us want to fuck under it.”

“No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home.”

“You lose everything you love in the order in which you love it.”

“[Olive’s] left foot was bleeding through a wide swath of bandages onto the tarp it was resting on. The bowl next to her was full of blood.Olive looked a little pale. “I don’t think I should move,” she said.“What are you doing?” Roger shut the door behind him and stood with his back to it.“I decided I might try to eat my toes,” Olive said, closing her eyes. “But now that I’ve started, I don’t think I should move.”Roger pushed himself off the wall and knelt down next to her. He unbuckled her silver belt and reached with it under her dress. He looped the belt around the top of her leg and tightened it. His hands were not shaking. “Sit on the loose end,” he said, pushing it under her. “I hope that works.”“You brought flowers,” she said, blinking.“Olive,” he said. “You cut off your toes.”She looked down at the bowl. “Are they still toes?” she asked.”

“They don't understand it. They're not old enough to know the first instinct of irritation should be avoided in order to keep an open mind.”