“When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. Only desire trumps time.”

“But this was the first time someone he loved would be gone forever. He didn't like to think about the forever part. But when he did, which was often, the only place he wanted to be was home.”

“All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world. Perhaps not fully appreciated then, but so sweet in my memory, and now gone forever.”

“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.”

“In a dog's world, only three states existed: "now," "in a while," and "forever." If someone left, he was gone "forever," and when he returned they rejoiced as much as if he were back from the dead precisely because he'd been gone "forever.”

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble. ”