“Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.”

“I don't know how this lively and dumb scene would have ended , or how long I might have remained immoveable in this ridiculous and delightful situation , had we not been interrupted.”

“We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.”

“Maybe when she'd been eighteen it was a quality she might have laughed at, but at twenty-eight, dependability had turned into something of an aphrodisiac.”

“He'd [Cork] delivered tragic news before. It had been part of the job, but he'd never become immune to he effect tragedy had on those who had to hear of it, and he'd never become used to his own feeling of helplessness in those situations.”

“My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded.”