“She understood now that knowing when to walk away and when to hunker down and refuse to leave were equally difficult decisions to make in a marriage; that going back didn't have to mean settling; and that the most fulfilling times weren't always before a storm, but sometimes long after the dust had settled, when you were able to lift your chin and see what was left standing so you could wrap yourself around it with all of the wonder it deserved.”

“Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.”

“She thought she would know when it happened. But now, as she looked around, she wondered if it was really like that at all. Maybe it happened in a million different ways, when you were thinking of it and you weren't. Maybe there was no gap, no jump, no chasm. You didn't forget yourself all at once. Maybe you just looked around one time or another and you thought, Hey. And there you were. ”

“I knew she was leaving. I knew we were never going to date long-distance. I knew that we wouldn't have been able to be like this back when were were dating, so there was no use in regretting what hadn't happened. I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present... ..It was snowing outside, anointing the air with a quiet wonder shared by all passersby. When I got back to my mother's apartment, I was a mixture of giddy thrill-happiness and muddle gut-confusion-- I didn't want to leave anything regarding Sofia to chance, and at the same time I was enjoying this step away from it.”

“Sometimes, when the dust settles, you realize it's really not as bad as you thought it was.”

“I believe there’s someone out there for everyone,” he {Isaac} says, “and when you meet that person, sometimes you know right away they are who you were meant to be with. And sometimes, years can go by before you let yourself believe that the feeling you’ve had about a person for so long, is actually love. And what a waste that is.”