“Looking out toward the open water she thought they could have floated in time, landed anywhere in the last thousand years.”

“This is the last time, the girl thought, that she would remember these things. If they floated back to her again, she would paddle away. When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.”

“For the first time in a long time, I actually look at her. I've always thought Lena was pretty, but now it occurs to me that at some point - last summer? last year? - she became beautiful.”

“thought about having one last kiss, but in the end the only way she could leave was to walk away without looking back.”

“[T]he last major effort to simplify the income tax system was passed in 1986; succeeding Congresses have amended it sixteen thousand times in the last twenty years.”

“She turned to stare out the window, lost in a thousand thoughts, not a single one of which Danielle could guess.”