“Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being remembered again.”

“At the worst possible moment, the most painful, darkest moment when you can't take it anymore and you are afraid, that is when a feeling of peace and comfort will come over you, and it's like nothing you've ever felt.”

“It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that unlike email you couldn’t obsessively reread what you’d written after you’d sent it. You couldn’t attempt to un-send it. Once you’d sent it it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you’d said more than the words. You gave to object away and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give.”

“How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.”

“I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.”

“How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?”

“She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn’t imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn’t really imagine it hadn’t.”