“...life laughs at predictions and introduces words where we imagined silences, and sudden returns when we thought we would never see each other again.”

“Bye-bye, I thought, almost sure that I'd never see her again. But if I did - if we ran into each other someday - I knew we would smile and say polite things like How are you? and Give my regards to your parents, and we would secretly remember that we used to mean something to each other. And even if that never happened, if we never spoke again, I was grateful we'd have tonight.”

“Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.”

“The unhappiest moment I could never tell you. All our fights blend into each other and are in fact re-enactments of the same fight, in which we punish each other--I with words, Hugh with silence--for being each other. We never needed any more than that.”

“The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again”

“Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word...Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”