“And there are certain moments in your life when something becomes clear, and other things in the past - things that your mind, unbeknownst to you, had earmarked because they didn't quite add up - suddenly all click into place, like small gears in a watch.”

“Children. For all of the times that you miss out on things you'd like to do because of them, there are an equal number of excuses they offer to get out of things you'd like to miss.”

“This was how the world persisted. The heaviness of despair - how could it exist in the midst of mascara, zippers, brunches ? It marched forward even when I was barely able to stand....It had been hard on all of us - not only missing Henry, but facing the idea that your whole world can change, suddenly irreversibly. We were reminded how flimsy everything is, as frail as the airmail envelopes my mother had sent us the summer she disappeared. This is the life you have and then it's gone. I felt sorry for my mother, I knew what it was like not to be able to help your child, to change the incomprehensible randomness of life, to reverse a loss.”

“It was strange how loud the world was when you weren't filling it up with your own noise.”

“I missed my mother and Elysius. It wasn't that I wanted them with me at that very moment. I wanted them in the past. I wanted to have back just one sunny afternoon together.”

“I'd heard about the traffic accidnet on the radio after I'd dropped Abbot off at school. I heard about the accident, that there were mutiple fatalities, an oil tanker ablaze, and the backed-up traffic on the interstate, and I had one simple though : I would take an alternate route. That was it, I would take an alternate route. Worse, I felt lucky - not because I was alive and others were dead but because I'd caught the update in time to avoid the exit ramp that would have landed me in he thick of it.”

“...almost like they had sucked up all the air in the room, and I was left oxygen-deprived. But with Henry, I had air again, I could breathe. He thought I was funny, and so I got funnier. He thought I was beautiful, and so I felt more beautiful. He thought I was experimental in the kitchen, and so I experimented more brilliantly. We had our problems, yes, but even our problems bound us closer. And now I knew what it was like to be only half of a pair and less of myself.”