“...the pain of the constant, bone-chilling loneliness she'd accustomed herself to. And learned to live with it.”

“Throwing herself into learning helped Miri ignore the painful chill of solitude around her.”

“My own apathy is bone chilling.”

“Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.”

“Maybe learning to be human was about learning to live in pain, not trying to figure out how to live pain-free. (156)”

“Girls, there are poets who learn from youto say, what you, in your aloneness, are;and they learn through you to live distantness,as the evenings through the great starsbecome accustomed to eternity.”