“I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.”

“I just don't want you to feel uncomfortable about this," he says.Say: "Hey. I am a very cool person. I am tough." Show him your bicep.”

“Adoption. A realized fantasy of your parents not really being your parents. Your genes could thrust one arm in the air and pump up and down. Yes! You were not actually related to Them!”

“I guessed that only at the last possible minute did the soul in a determined fashion flee the dying flesh. Who could blame it for its reluctance? We loved our lives more than we ever knew, and at the end felt the bounty of them, as one would say in church, felt even the richness of their missed opportunities, or just understood that they were more than we had realized during the living of them and a lot to give up.”

“Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.”

“She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?”

“He was thinking, but she could tell he wasn't good at it....'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?”