“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”

“The cost of oblivius daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realigment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.Her reverie, once rich in plausible details, had become a passing silliness before the hard mass of the actual.It was difficult to come back.”

“There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.”

“Louise, I would gladly fire the past for you, go and not look back. I have been reckless before, never counting the cost, oblivious to the cost. Now, I've done the sums ahead. I know what it will mean to redeem myself from the accumulations of a lifetime. I know and I don't care. You set before me a space uncluttered by association. It might be a void or it might be a release. Certainly I want to take the risk. I want to take the risk because the life I have stored up is going mouldy.”

“The words came out slowly, haltingly, as if they had cost him a struggle. Nan had noticed before now that anger was too big a garment for him; it always hung on him in uneasy folds.”

“What men always seem to ignore is that until Eve arrived, Adam didn't even have his own apartment. He'd never tasted beer, and there was no place to get a decent hamburger. He slept in the dirt, and was so oblivious he didn't even realize he was naked. Even worse, he didn't seem to notice that Eve was naked, either.”