“That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.”

“It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.”

“My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.”

“Certain things existed out of time. It was ten years ago, it was this morning. In that way the accident was like his mother's death. It did not recede so much as hover, waxing and waning at different intervals but always there. It happened in the past and it was always happening. It happened every single minute of the day.”

“A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds.”

“...sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another...”