“Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.”

“And then she moved from shock to grief the way she might enter another room.”

“To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.”

“It was probably not so unusual to be a different person with a different man, for all parts were authentically within, waiting to be coaxed out by one person or another”

“I thought about how one tiny decision can change a life. A decision that takes only a split second to make.”

“And she thought then how strange it was that disaster—the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face—could be at times, such a thing of beauty.”

“My mother taught me to knit when I was seven. I forgot about knitting until one day I saw Marion at the counter with hers and confessed that I knew how. Confessed is the right word. In those days, in the early 1980s, knitting was not a hobby a preteen would readily admit to. But Marion, every enthusiastic, pounced upon me and insisted that I show her something I'd made. I did -- a misshapen scarf -- which she priased exravagantly. she lent me a raspberry-colored wool for another project, a hat for myself. Since then I've been knitting pretty continuously. It's addictive and it's soothing, and fora a few minutes anyway, it makes me feel closer to my mother.”