“If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity -- to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -- a declaration that things can be not only different but better.”

“One would hope, as well that intimacy would leave more of a mark, that more of it would remain. But it doesn’t. You just end up thinking, who is this person?”

“No amount of promises can guarantee love”

“Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.”

“Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.”

“Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.”

“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”