“For her sex had always been about a borrowed connection. Wires patched together to make a unit long enough to transmit a message. That shared goal, those stolen moments when nothing else mattered but pleasure. When they ended, so did the link. The electricity faded. That wouldn't be the case here.”

“In some ways the goals of teaching and writing are the same. You hope to connect to someone else, to make them care about what you care about. So that the things which matter, the things that matter to you, matter to them.”

“A shrug. "I wanted to make sure you were taken care of, just in case."She had perhaps a moment, before the valet came. A moment in which to try and relate a truth so deeply ingrained, it came to her lips like second nature. "Dar.. " A breath. "If anything ever happened to you, there wouldn't be enough money in the world to patch the hole it would leave in me.”

“Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left.”

“Borrowed time and stolen moments are those of which we take the most ownership.”

“It was a message from her. A reminder—here among hundreds of people—of a moment that had been theirs alone.”