“You cannot fly into your own arms.”

“But you cannot fly away from people who have flown away from you; you cannot fly into your own arms.”

“Books remember all the things you cannot contain.”

“My memories are not books. They are only stories that I have been over so many times in my head that I don't know from one day to the next what's remembered and what's made up. Like when you memorize a poem, and for one small unimportant part you supply your own words. The meaning's the same, the meter's identical. When you read the actual version you can never get it into your head that it's right and you're wrong.”

“Lighter things will happen to you, birds will steal your husband's sandwich on the beach, and your child will still be dead, and your husband's shock will still be funny.”

“but you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. you must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.”

“Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.”