“What you had could never make up for what you'd lost.”

“Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?”

“I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.”

“He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn't have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking.”

“What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?”

“that once people decided what they thought of you, that was it. You'd been judged. You got a stamp on your forehead that you could never wash off.”