“Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect?”

“I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)”

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.”

“Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?”

“There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.”

“The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you.”

“It was possible, Trixie supposed, that everyone had two faces: Some of us did a better job of hiding it than others.”