“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”

“Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.”

“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”

“I went over and over everything that had ever happened between us. I couldn’t keep doing it, going back and fourth, holding her close and then pushing her away. It wasn’t right”

“You can't run away forever but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.”

“The grief of children was unconditional, fueled by the implicit belief that it would last forever; for a child, grief was not grief unless it was eternal.”