“They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later.”

“The problem with marriage - or may be its strength - was that it spanned a distance, and you were never the same person you started out being. If you were lucky, you could still recognize each other years later.”

“The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed.”

“if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of wax.”

“Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.”

“People had figured out all sorts of ways to makethings seem different than they truly were.”

“He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something thatdoesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.”