“I could hear the exasperation in her voice, so beautiful and familiar, but sad, too, like hearing church bells right before your funeral.”

“I had what, I wanted, it was with me, in the room, including the room itself. Was it possible that we hear that voice not when we want something else but when we're in danger of losing the things we already have?”

“There's nothing as quiet as that moment before one person is about to tell another something neither of them wants to hear.”

“I almost touch her on the arm as she touched me on the arm, to console her. But I fear that my touch won't tingle her arm as hers tingled mine, and how unbearably sad that would be.”

“You could have saved her," he said, and I realized that he had started crying, crying being that thing you do when you haven't done enough and you're afraid it's too late to start.”

“There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail — the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions – and so I didn't pay much attention to those letters at all.”

“About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is.”