“I guess there's a lot we hope for that never happens.”

“Because it is the lot of mothers to remember what no one else cares to, Mrs. Dutta thinks. To tell them over and over until they are lodged, perforce, in family lore. We are the keepers of the heart's dusty corners.”

“Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified.'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.”

“they say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. their gaze is a rope of gold binding each other. even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. they can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again”

“I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!”

“I have to believe in possibility. How else can we bear the enormous weight of life?”

“Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you.”