“...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. ”

“One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.”

“In the existence of our lives, there is a single coincidence that brings us together and for a moment, our hearts beat as one.”

“She focused on her favorite machine in the room: the one that kept track of Blake’s heartbeat. With slow breaths and concentration, Livia could make her heart beat in tandem with his.”

“Tatiana lived for that evening hour with him that propelled her into her future and into the barely formed, painful feelings that she could neither express nor understand. Friends walking in the lucent dusk. There was nothing more she could have from him, and there was nothing more she wanted from him but that one hour at the end of her long day when her heart beat and her breath was short and she was happy.”

“The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”