“... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.”

“I knew all this, I understood the rules, but still, nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.”

“Once I had asked, ‘But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.”

“For months I heard whispers and though it had seemed that they were carried to me on the wind, they were really coming from inside my own head.”

“Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes [his] gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.”

“I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”

“It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.”