“That day had changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person had found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.”

“But everything had changed, and I was becoming more and more of who I really was, and less of this person I had thought I wanted to be.”

“She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.”

“How every one he had slept with had only made him miss her more”

“Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that? Thirty, maybe forty if he didn’t drink himself to death. The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder”

“I had a plan for tonight and nothing was going to change that. My mom asked me where that boy was that was so tenaciously determined. Well, I found him. More tenacious and more determined than ever.”