“or maybe love is summed up in moments - that day in the park, the time you had chinese food by candlelight, when the boy you liked left a message, finally, on your machine. maybe the telling of those moments is even better than the moments themselves. ”

“The task of any good cook, of any parent, is to be present- in the kitchen and out. To taste all the items, absorb each child's day, all those moments, and form them into the day's meals.”

“That's what the best par of life is, those days or minutes you can't ever frame or paint beforehand”

“at keltner's deli, everything was somehow neutralized. they were girls. they were girls with odd names who smoked after school together and maybe sometimes alone.”

“maybe one of the reasons i don't express myself as well as i want to is because inside, shoved way down into an unseen pit, i'm not sure of what i want. ”

“Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.”

“You did respond—your response was the worst kind—you did nothing.”