“A love gone bad, a sea of bitterness: such an everyday thing. As ordinary as the tide, and perhaps as relentless. But tides turned, too.”

“And a blank page was quite beautiful on its own, she'd found. There were already so many words, so many voices in the world. She flinched at contributing to the cacophony.”

“Here it was like wind or rain, a sign of the seasons, just part of the weather-- another element of this country that took hold of her, even as it eluded her grasp”

“Four things you can't recover: The stone after the throw, The word after it's said, The occasion after it's missed,The time after it's gone.”

“I'd gone so far past my fear threshold, I'd completely given up on being afraid”

“Because if we're on the road to hell, we're going to dance the whole damn way and give them something to talk about when we're gone.”

“Life is too uncertain... You must seize happiness where you find it.”