“I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.”

“And I do think that great fiction, even when it's comedic, has an urgency or an inevitability to it, a sense that the writer absolutely had to write this particular story in this way.”

“I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected - an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There never had been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows. That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different. And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention. Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind.”

“People move; this is normal and happens frequently, especially for a single 20-something. Sometimes you wonder why you self-imposed such a hard thing-but with any hope, you're happy with the change despite moments of second-guessing. I am definitely happy, and I don't wish I hadn't done it.”

“Tuesdays were my favorite day. I don't remember why-it was just something about the way that u looked like when it was next to e that seemed very friendly.”

“Our distance has lived in me like the aftermath of a bad dream-I carry it around, the knowledge that we were once close, that something was lost; it's the lingering sadness of unfinished business. (18)”