“Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.”

“Those eyes, Teddy thought. Even frozen in time, they howled. You wanted to climb inside the picture and say, 'No, no, no. It's okay, it's okay. Sssh.' You wanted to hold her until the shakes stopped, tell her that everything would be all right.”

“At that moment, Dave would have lifted a house for Jimmy, held it up to his chest until Jimmy told him where to put it down.”

“When they'd first come out in the morning, a single flounder lay flapping and puffing in the breezeway, one sad, swollen eye looking back toward the sea.”

“He'd told his son recently that life was luck. But life, he'd come to realize as he aged, was also memory. The recollection of moments often proved richer than the moment themselves.”

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.”

“He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.”