“Here we are - despite the delays, the confusion, and the shadows en route - at last, or for the moment, where we always intended to be.”

“When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.”

“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.”

“There you are, diligently swimming a straight line, minding the form of your strokes, when you look up and see, always a shock, the currents you can't even feel have pulled you off course.”

“Ready how? Who's ever ready for anything important?”

“I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.”

“All I meant was that people take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that. And some places have a way of magnifying your demons, or of, I don't know, giving them pep pills.”