“And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.”

“It had not been a long journey, but the memory of it filled her like an infection. She had felt tethered by time to the city behind her, so that the minutes stretched out taut as she moved away, and slowed the farther she got, dragging out her little voyage.”

“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.”

“The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.”

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

“She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.”