“Here is the knowledge, so easy and mean: find what they love and wreck it. Simple.”

“People are stupid. Why are they so stupid? There is an algorithm for the way humans were designed: love and be loved. Follow it andyou’re happy. Fight against it and you’re not. It’s so simple, it’s hard to understand.”

“But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.”

“You don't do so well with marriage. I don't think you've begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone & here's what I know about you: You have so much love to give! But I feel like you're all the time digging in the tomato bin, saying, "Where are the apples?”

“For what reason would I lie to one I so love?”

“...what John likes best are the small and undramatic moments that make for a kind of easy comfort, for a feeling of being grounded in arelationship.”

“Nothing helped until the day she took a tablet and pencil into the basement and moved the event out of her and onto paper, where it was reshaped into a kind of simple equation: loss equaled the need to love again, more.”