“To a Scot, the past clings like sand to wet feet, and is carried about as a burden. The many ghosts are always a part of them, inescapable.”

“When i was a kid we took a trip to the beach, and I just remember being annoyed by the smell of sunscreen, the squawk of seagulls, and the way that the sand would cling on to my wet feet. Then of course, if I tried to wash them off in the ocean, they would just get wetter and the sand would cling more. Talk about a no-win situation.”

“Isn't that part of love, I wanted to ask, carrying someone else's ghosts for them?”

“If from the beginning you always believed that a ticket was only one-way, then you wouldn't have to try so vainly to cling to the sand like an oyster to a rock.”

“It was more like a form of claustrophobia -- a dread of exchanging the freedom of her own self-imposed routine for the inescapable burden of somebody else's.”

“Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”