“It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?”

“For God's sake, if I learned anything during this damn trial it's that the only way someone can leave you is if you let them. And I'm not doing that, Dee. It may look like that today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, but one day you're going to wake up and see that this whole time you've been gone, you've only been headed back to where you started. And I'll be there, waiting." He leans forward and kisses me once, feather-light, on the lips. "It's not like I'm not letting you go," he murmurs. "I'm just trusting you enough to come back.”

“How can you ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom”

“I hadn't been thinking, actually. I was just trying to get to a place where I'd be noticed.”

“Do you ever go back?"Ruthann nods, "When I need to remember where I came from, or where I'm headed.”

“it it strange, suddenly having a memory come back out of nowhere. you think you're going crazy; you wonder where this recollection has been hiding all your life. you try to push it away, because you think you've hammered out the whole timeline of your life, but then you see that one extra moment, and suddendly you are breaking apart what you though was a solid segment, and seeing it for what it is: just a string of events, shoulder to shoulder, and a gap where there is room for one more.”

“I had always been suspicious of women who described the dissolution of their marriages as something that happened overnight. How could you not know? I'd thought. How could you miss all those signs? Well, let me tell you how: you were so busy putting out a fire directly in front of you that you were completely oblivious to the inferno raging at your back.”