“...Simon and I by then were practicing to be apart, rehearsing together in the same room and often in the same conversation.”

“We too often laughed at the same time to be a whore and a lonely guy.”

“It's like the smell of burned toast. You made the toast. You looked forward to it. You even enjoyed making it, but it burned. What were you doing? Was it your fault? It doesn't matter anymore. You open the window, but only the very top layer of the smell goes away. The rest remains around you. It's the walls. You leave the room, but it's on your clothes. You change your clothes, but it's in your hair. It's on the thin skin on the tops of your hand. And in the morning, it's still there.”

“You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.”

“Madeline, my wife, never used to wear a watch. She does now, I am told. For a long time, in a very inexact way, I had kept time for her. There was the time before we were married and the time after. There was the time before I was hospitalised and the time after. There was the time she needed me and the time after. And there is now.”

“What else is life from the time you were born but a struggle to matter, at least to someone?”

“I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.”