“Any time, any place? I ask, gazing out across the glittering lake. A breeze disturbs it's silver surface. In a heartbeat, Phoenix promises.”

“There's a gap as deep as a canyon between how you come across to people and the way you are on the inside.”

“I hatethat moment when Aaron and I split – each time it happens, and ithappens a lot. He storms off, or I walk out on him and I have asplit second where I feel I’ve lost my grip, I’m falling off the edgeof the world, I’m yelling, “Help!” and no one hears me. I’m alone.But later, when you get a distance and you start to think it through,it feels like it might not be so bad.”

“Yeah – so maybe we should all give up on love and get on witheverything else,’ she sighed. She turned her head towards me andsquinted through the glare of the sun. ‘Why don’t we?”

“Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.”

“Running into a burning building probably wasn't the smartest move Kenton Lake had ever made. Then again, sadly, it wasn't his dumbest either.”

“Find your happiness, Miss. It's out there, for anyone with the courage to follow it, no matter how many twists and turns the path might take.”