“There are more experiences in life than you’d think for which there are no words.”

“I have always been faithful to you if faithful means the experience against which everything else has been measured.”

“the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”

“Is imagination dependent upon experience, or is experience influenced by imagination?”

“She thinks of all that will have to be done to dismantle a life.”

“Sydney discovers that she minds the loss of her mourning. When she grieved, she felt herself to be intimately connected to Daniel. But with each passing day, he floats away from her. When she thinks about him now, it is more as a lost possibility than as a man. She has forgotten his breath, his musculature.”

“Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.”