“..I always recognize the foces that will shape my life. I let them do their work. Sometimes they tear through my life like a hurricane. Sometimes they simply shift the ground under me, so that I stand on different earth, and something or someone has been swallowed up. I steady myself, in the earthquate. I lie down, and let the hurricane pass over me. I never fight. Afterwards I look around me, and I say, 'Ah, so this at least is left for me. And that dear person has also survived.' I quietly inscribe on the stone tablet of my heart the name which has gone forever. Th inscription is a thing of agony. Then I start on my way again.”

“I drift off for a while. I don't know how long, but when I open my eyes, the Oscars are still on and Alex tells me that Sid has gone and this makes me a little sad. Whatever the four of us had is over. He is my daughter's boyfriend now, and I am a father. A widower. No pot, no cigarettes, no sleeping over. They'll have to find inventive ways to conduct their business, most likely in uncomfortable places, just like the rest of them. I let him and my old ways go. We all let him go, as well as who we were before this, and now it's really just the three of us. I glance over at the girls, taking a good look at what's left.”

“I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. ”

“I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it.”

“I let her go. She didn't step back. “I need to either get you out of my system so I can go back to my life, or fall in love with you so much it changes my life completely. Ever since I saw you, I wanted you.” My jaw clenched. Did she know how hard that was to admit? “You break all my rules and scare me half to death.”

“What are you wearing?”I looked down at my soft flannel pajamas. I’d washed them so many times the plaid pattern had faded mostly to grays and whites. “What do you want me to be wearing?”Dan’s voice shifted a little. I imagined a smile. “Nothing.”Such a small thing, that little bit of flirting, but all at once I felt as if air had rushed into my lungs, and I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Nothing but a smile.”

“Sometimes I feel that life has passed me by... Do you ever feel that way, Charlie Brown?""I feel that it has knocked me down and walked all over me!”