“Get used to it. She'll be there for the rest of your life. She'll be there on birthdays, at Christmastime, when you get your period, when you graduate, have sex, when you marry, have children, when you die. She'll be there and she won't be there.”

“That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.”

“I think grief and fear are going to come to him suddenly. They'll be undiluted and words won't work. We're all going to get hit and won't know how to hit back. I wish I knew the answers, how to help myself and the people who will hurt all around me.”

“We walk until there aren't more houses, all the way to the part of the beach where the current makes the waves come in then rush back out so that the two waves clash, water casting up like a geyser. We watch that for a while and then Scottie says, "I wish Mom was here." I'm thinking the exact same thought. That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too. Every day I kept track of anecdotes, occurrences, and gossip, bullet-pointing the news in my head and even rehearsing my stories before telling them to Joanie in bed at night.”

“I'm sorry, I say. I didn't give you everything you wanted. I wasn't everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted.”

“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.”

“Because feeling love does make you feel superior. Until you find out you aren't loved back.”