“Everyone loved a good reader. And he'd always loved being a great reader - until recently. Maybe it was just part of getting older, or maybe it was being a librarian, or just being here, but lately he'd found he was becoming suspicious of his own love of books. All that reading - it had started to seem wrong, worthless almost, without purpose.”

“What he'd never understood about men in his position, in all the books he'd read and movies he'd seen about them, was clearer to him now: you couldn't keep expecting wholehearted love without, at some point, requiting it. There was no credit to be earned for simply being good.”

“He loved her, he loved her, and until he'd loved her she had never minded being alone....”

“Maybe love is just hormones or endorphins—not some great force all around us. Maybe that’s just nonsense. It’s always seemed to me that love is about being found—the way you might find your missing cat because you knew he had a notch on his left ear and came to the sound of knew he had a notch on his left ear and came to the sound of pebbles rattling in a can. But maybe that isn’t the way things work. Maybe you can only be “found” for a little while. Just likeJoseph and Isuza LaRonge discovered, “forever” isn’t really forever. Everything ends. Everything is lost eventually.”

“I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”

“He'd wondered for so many years if he'd ever be able to forgive his father. Maybe he'd just used the wrong word. Surrender. Acceptance. Those seemed better.”