“You made new rules for the people you loved. They weren't subject to the same judgment criteria you reserved for the rest of the world. In some ways you were way easier on them, and in others, much harder.”

“...knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.”

“The nature of love is that it catches you off-guard, subjects you to rules you have never faced, some of them contradictory.”

“Whatever kind of introvert you are, some people will find you “too much” in some ways and “not enough” in others.”

“He had had his life and it was over and then he went on living it again with different people and more money, with the best of the same places, and some new ones.You kept from thinking and it was all marvellous. You were equipped with good insides so that you did not go to pieces that way, the way most of them had, and you made an attitude that you cared nothing for the work you used to do, now that you could no longer do it.”

“It was easy to forget that other people lived in a world where rules and laws and common sense could keep you safe. A world where, if you did the right thing you were allowed to get on with your life in whichever way you chose.”