“Now it was just the two of us, Max and me. And about a thousand other people around us.”

“In truth we were quickly reaching--had likely enough already reached--the age where it no longer made sense to talk about "promise." It was around this time that I remarked to Max that no matter what we now achieved no one would say, "He's so young." Precocity had passed us by."After twenty-eight," I sad sadly, "you're judged on your merits.""Unless one of us dies," Max corrected me. "Then they'll all say, 'He was so young.”

“Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.”

“I had the feeling she was going to say something big. One of us had to say it. What happened to us? Where are we going? It was like this silence between us was frozen and we were both feeling our way around it. How is it that two people can need each other so absolutely and then, in moments, not even know how to be next to each other and just be quiet?”

“The two of us hold each other's gazes for a long, unembarrassed moment and I feel that Ky knows. I'm not sure what he knows - whether he knows me, or just something about me.”

“Instead of being fascinated by the things around us, we now try so hard to fascinate others by the things on us.”