“That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.”

“People die, terrible things happen. I know this now. You can't pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go.”

“It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.”

“Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.”

“Certain things existed out of time. It was ten years ago, it was this morning. In that way the accident was like his mother's death. It did not recede so much as hover, waxing and waning at different intervals but always there. It happened in the past and it was always happening. It happened every single minute of the day.”

“There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.”

“Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all.”