“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.”

“This is what I know about love. That it is tested every day, and what is not renewed is lost. One chooses either to care more or to care less. Once the choice is to care less, then there is no stopping the momentum of goodbye.”

“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 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.”

“Your leaving will not be solved by your coming back. But one does not preclude the other. And maybe that is always what there is to fear, in everything that happens-what we choosee to love to will choose to forsake us.”

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.”

“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.”