“Originally, the cellar served primarily as a coal store. Today it holds the boiler, idle suitcases, out-of-season sporting equipment, and many sealed cardboard boxes that are almost never opened but are always carefully transferred from house to house with every move in the belief that one day someone might want some baby clothes that have been kept in a box for twenty-five years.”

“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”

“I don't care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together,”

“I spent so much time carefully packing up my past. Sealing it shut. Storing it away. Seeing Brandon makes that box fall open and all the memories spill out at my feet.”

“When she was gone, I went to the basement, found an empty box, and sealed the teddy bear and the NYU sweatshirt inside with heavy-duty tape. I started thinking about Leigh's ID bracelet and I imagined that one day, maybe years and years from now, I might open the box and say the same thing to my daughter that Leigh might say to hers: This was from a boy I used to know. He was very special to me, but that was so long ago.”

“You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.”