“It's just hard to see people from your past when your present is so cataclysmically fucked.”

“It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.”

“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”

“To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it’s too late is to become divinely fucked up.”

“...the first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack.”

“I'll tell you the same thing I told your father. We make mistakes. They don't make us. If they did, we'd all be royally fucked, especially a coupe of assholes like us." I grin at his last remark, and finally find some words to say, even though I'm not sure I possess the conciliatory feelings to match my town. "You could learn a lot from an asshole."Dugan smiles at that, and it's the first time I've ever seen him do it. "I guess so.”

“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”