“No, it wasn't aging that made someone brittle, it was disappointment that did. It was allowing the world to make you smaller and smaller until you couldn't hold yourself upright anymore. That, that made a woman break.”

“An uncomplicated woman gets complicated when she finally says what she means.”

“She wouldn't look back, didn't want closure. She'd imagine for the rest of her years that somehow a part of her just went on living that life.”

“The world the gods made is too big for us, so we make ourselves a smaller one.”

“And I know that when you get hurt, your first instinct is to run. But I also realized something else. No one has ever followed you when you did run. But I'm going to follow, and I'm going to keep following until you realize that you can trust me. I'm not going to let you run away from something that could be so great. That is so great. Marty, I love you.- Nate”

“I could have died right there, because the thought of living without someone you love is like a pair of giant hands pressing around your heart, making it smaller and smaller, until you are left with only a memory of warmth. It’s like when the sun comes through a window, moving across the room with each hour, until night falls and all you can do is try to remember the soothing shapes it made.”

“Education,’ one of R’s teachers taught, ‘teaches you not to be yourself.’ But who is yourself? R decided if it or he wasn’t blood, it wasn’t anything.”