“You can't really know who you are unless you understand where you came from.”

“You know the hurt is coming, but there's this reprieve just long enough to get your hopes up, to make you think that maybe, just maybe, this time you dodged it. But then it comes anyway.”

“I can't help wondering if love can really be blamed for the things we do to ourselves.”

“And I'm reminded just how quickly life can change.”

“You understand it's not a matter of strategy. I'm not talking about secrets or deceptions. I'm talking about being yourself. If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.”

“If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things that others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.”

“Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.”