“In the rational light of day, he could tell himself that it was better this way, for both of them. The past was the past, nothing but memories buried, and the pain of losing something precious was but brief. Most of the time he could make himself believe it, but sometimes in the night, with no company but his own echoing thoughts, the past would sneak up on him.”

“Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.”

“And he would never have instructed her to tell his past self such a story and expected himself to believe it.”

“Marshall Shafter...kept pasted in his desk drawer a piece of paper he looked at from time to time to remind himself of something. It said, "A fool can put on his own clothes better than wise man can do it for him.”

“Teeth could befixed, the past couldn't be. He wondered if memories could be. He wanted to fix his memories.”

“Sometimes the past needed to stay buried; it was the only way you could move on. And sometimes you had to dig it up, because that too was the only way.”