“After I slid down the wall for the third time, breaking every single fingernail in the process, I finally figured out that Thor was hollering at me. I turned to see him standing in the bed of the truck. Which, of course, made much more sense, than pretending to be Spiderman.It's a humbling moment when you realize your dog is smarter than you.”

“The brokenness around you affects you in different ways at different times. .................... . At every point and every moment, your life is messier and more complicated than it really ought to be because everything is so much more difficult in such a terribly broken world.But let us also see that this world of ours is more than a broken-down house. It is a broken-down house in the process of being restored.”

“I love you anyway, Lia," he calls after me. "Until time tells, I mean."I turn to him and smile, loving him more in this moment than any other. "Until time tells, then, Henry, and beyond. I love you as well.”

“It happened in pieces, tiny little turning points. I'll never figure out when it all turned, because it wasn't a single moments. It doesn't matter how many times I look back, how many times I try to figure it out. There is no before and after. Just a year of choices.”

“You know what else I did?' he yelled after me as I left. "I fingered her!"I turned back to look at him. He made me laugh. He pretended to be so confused and helpless, but maybe he was smarter than all of us.'The inside of a vagina isn't at all what I thought it would feel like,' he shouted excitedly. 'It feels very organized.'Maybe not.”

“You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.”