“Books are memory. They remember their contents and pass them on. They keep track of who claims ownership, who they were given by and for what occasion. They mediate, in their margins, disagreements between reader and author.”

“Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies...”

“She holds within her the memory of this journey, drawn out for her like a constellation in the darkness, each element of the landscape connecting her along a line that is her past. Carter may want to come here now, but she's the one who belongs, on this road, under this piece of sky.”

“We control the content of our dreams.”

“You know people like this, right? People who are incapable of enjoying anything.”

“Women were complicated creatures. Any man who thought he had one figured out simply wasn’t paying attention,”

“Could have been, mind you. And that's one big mother of a conditional. Because who's to say she wanted me in the same way? After all, she left me, didn't she? Maybe I didn't try too hard to get her to stay but what words are there for begging? Please? Don't go, honey? They're crippled halfwits, those sentences, and besides, who uses a lot of words in a friendship anyway? You run out of things to say pretty early on, that's my experience. Sure, you start off thick enough, so many words you could gag on them. The facts, and the sentences - and the sticky tears. Out it comes, out it all comes, the fat story of your life but before you know it you've talked your guts out and there's nothing left to say. You go to her, to confide, and choke up air.”