“For the first six months, all whe wanted was honest labor, finely crafted novels, and surf.”

“... to celebrate my first hour of freedom. It's been going on nearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have guessed, even yesterday how easy it would be to put an end to it if I wanted.”

“Six months of waiting. Six months of understanding the inner workings of faith and the outer spheres of the world. Six months of time: hundreds and millions of awakening seconds and sleeping minutes. Six months of aching stretched out like the Sahara: lickety-split, snippety-snip, jiggity-jig Six months of fading and blooming, stopping and starting. Six months of love: a breath, a deluge, an eternity; a single flake of snow.”

“All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.”

“Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.”

“When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.”