“There was a terminal narrative. It was a story until it stopped being a story and until then they kept wanting to know. Give up... Surrender your need for the detail; there is only one way this is going to end.”

“This is what we had become, after the first symbiotic year of our living together: a couple who needed another couple to be around.”

“That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don't know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it's just the horizon - and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it's suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you've had the right shots. ”

“Jesus Christ, it's like living with Stevie bloody Nicks,' I said, 'only without the cocaine, which would be more fun.”

“Let people know that you will always believe in the happy ending to the story--because the story doesn't end here. Some happy endings will never be read in this life. But the atonement of Jesus Christ promises us that our stories will all have successful conclusions one day, if we put our trust in him.”

“How life can change if you're lucky enough to be around for it.”

“Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open -- the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants.”