“Wasn't there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the kind that draws Valentines and learns to spell Mississippi?”

“Accordingly, the one respect in which I depart from my younger self is that I now regard those people who have little or no story to tell themselves as terribly fortunate.”

“He's one of those attorneys who think of the law as a game, not a morality play. I'm told that'd the kind you want.”

“He wasn't mad, he was sad.”

“He'd been unable to discern whether this frantic bustle of hers was what it claimed to be - an ardent determination to live every remaining day to the fullest - or quite the opposite: an evasion. An equally ardent determination to distract herself, from what only she could know, and thus a complete failure to inhabit her life in the scarcest respect.”

“That was one of your favorite themes: that profusion, replication, popularity wasn't necessarily devaluing, and that time itself made all things rare. You loved to savor the present tense and were more conscious than anyone I have ever met that its every constituent is fleeting.”

“And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.”