“The hardest thing to accept about the passage of time is that the people who mattered most to us are all wrapped up in parenthesis”

“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”

“Just accept as a fact that everyone of any emotional importance to you is related to everyone else of any emotional importance to you; these relationships need not extend to blood, of course, but the people who change your life emotionally - all those people, from different places, from different times, spanning many wholly unrelated coincidences - are nonetheless 'related'. We associate people with each other for emotional not for factual reasons - people who've never met each other, who don't even know each other exists; people, even, who have forgotten us.”

“When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?”

“Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.”

“Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)”

“I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.”