“I wanted to ask her, What does a stranger feel like? Not to be snarky or sarcastic. Because I really wanted to know if there was a difference,vif there was a way to become truly knowable, if there wasn’t always something keeping you a stranger, even to the people you weren’t strange to at all.”

“It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help?I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?”

“...What I want is to be like I him. I want the gall, the gumption--for that is what it takes--to ask people I do not know if I may come into their lives, without fearing that they might say no, or fearing that once they let me in, they might hurt me. I want to know, truly know, others, reach out to people who would otherwise just come and go, passing through my life as strangers.”

“And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true.What do you mean?” Norah asks.It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”

“...no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.”

“Would you truly sleep with strangers?" "I don't know, I haven't met the strangers yet.”