“Loss isn't an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn't look like anything, that's what is so strange. It just fits in.”

“When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.”

“But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.”

“What would I look like if everything that I am, no secrets, was put on paper? Would I be horrifying?”

“What was war really like? What vast crack had buried Jeff down in the mud, had sent Andy off with cattle? What had changed her best friend so much he could barely look at her now?”

“I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations”

“I was trying so hard to be what everyone wanted me to be, and yet every time I looked around, I was failing.”