“You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.”

“You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.”

“Anything can happen. But what goes wrong isn’t your fault. You can’t spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won’t work. You’ll just end up missing the life you have.”

“You're right, Norah, anything can happen, anytime. But what goes wrong isn't your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.”

“There was in the mountains, and perhaps in the world at large, a theory of compensation that held that for everything given something else was immediately and visibly lost. "Well, you've got the smarts even if your cousin did get the looks." Compliments, seductive as flowers, thorny with their opposites: "Yes, you may be smart but you sure are ugly; You may look nice but you didn't get a brain." Compensation; balance in the universe.”

“In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.”

“All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now.”