“Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination. . . .”

“It was unsettling, Laurel thought, suppressing a shiver, how quickly a person's presence could be erased, how easily civilization gave way to wilderness.”

“I am beginning to feel at home in the past and a visitor to this strange and blanched experience we agree to call the present”

“Love affairs, in their beginnings, are all about the present. But there is a point in each--an event, an exchange, some other unseen trigger--which forces the past and the future back into focus.”

“He was a scribble of a man.”

“Those who live in memories are never really dead.”

“It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I'd been missing.”