“I am a writer. The proof of how I am feeling is always in my pen.”

“There are words in my life that I wish I'd never said. I wish I'd never told my wife that I loved her, because then I had to line up all my actions with those words. I had to always act like that was true. And those three words, I love you, should never be used if you don't mean them. My lying has meant I will never get to use them on anyone else. I went against my own truth, my own heart, and there is really no coming back from that.”

“I have seen animals shot, and I have seen people who have been blindsided by greief. We always know what has hit us. We don't always know that it will kill us.”

“When a writer writes, it's as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed.”

“It's as if I've never seen Jane before, never known her. With just an undervest on, she looks unbelievably thin. Arms no wider than the sticks of a bower. A collarbone protuding from the skin in all its detail. And with that one gesture, I learn the fundamental truth of her. When she takes off her sweater and, without thinking, hands it over to David to use as wool, I can see how Jane loves. And I know -with all my heart I know- that there is no protection in the world for someone who loves like that.”

“I don't think anymore that my life is about what has happened to me. It's about what I choose to believe. It's not what I can see, but what I think is out there. And in the end, this end, here is what I believe. The heart is a wild and fugitive creature. The heart is a dog who comes home.”

“It's funny to think that Anson and I were here, in this same place, together all that time ago, and now here we are again. It makes me feel good, makes me feel that perhaps everything doesn't just disappear, that some things are circling back, taking the long way, but circling back towards me.”