“He rests his head against the mirror and exhales. In the years he was with Emma he sometimes wondered idly what it would be like if she weren't around; not in a morbid way, just pragmatically, speculatively, because don't all lovers do this? Wonder how he would be without her? Now the answer is in the mirror. Loss has endowed him stupid and banal. Without her he is without merit or virtue or purpose a shabby, lonely, middle aged drunk, poisoned with regret and shame.”

“She watched him, her head angled. He sometimes felt that she looked at him the way a cat regards a mouse. He just wondered how long it would take for her to pounce.”

“She was all he wanted. He would give everything for her. Without thought. Without regret.”

“I just figured out why someone would want to make the first mirror... I think some lover wanted his beloved to see how she appeared to him. He wanted her to be able to see herself the way that he did.”

“She was his. He would die for her. He would die without her.”

“He had felt safe with what he had confided. It had been the same with Queenie. You could say things in the car and know she had tucked them somewhere safe among her thoughts, and that she would not judge him for them, or hold it against him in years to come. He supposed that was what friendship was, and regretted all the years he had spent without it.”