“It was a sickening, humbling, maddeningly powerless sensation this watching them and waiting for them to come to him. For the time they could be a family again. But Mickey did it like one’s tongue pointlessly finds a mouth sore over and over again, half to see if it was still there, half to see if it still hurt.”

“If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.”

“Begin—to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this and thou wilt have finished.”

“Someone once told her there’s a formula for how long it takes to get over someone, that it’s half as long as the time you’ve been together.But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.”

“Getting angry over something that won't change is like seeing what happens if you hit your hand with a hammer over and over again, and being surprised each time when it hurts. So you might as well stop doing it.”

“If you were coming in the fall,I'd brush the summer by,With half a smile and half a spurn,As housewives do a fly.If I could see you in a year,I'd wind the months in balls,And put them each in separate drawers,Until their time befalls.”