“Life was unendurable, and yet everywhere it was endured.”

“It is unacceptable, all the stunned and anxious missing a person is asked to endure in life. It is not to be endured, not really.”

“I want to pretend there's such a thing as requited love. As the endurance of love.”

“The piece was like an elegant interrogation made of tangled yarn, a query from a well-dressed man in a casket, not yet dead. It proceeded slowly, like a careful equation, and then not: if x = y, if major = minor, if death equals part of life and life part of death, then what is the sum of the infinite notes of this one phrase? It asked, answered, reasked, its moody asking a refinement of reluctance or dislike.”

“They looked like frogs who’d been kissed and kissed roughly, yet stayed frogs.”

“Don't make your own life your project in your own life: total waste of time.”

“What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future. That is why they do the fateful and amusing things they do: who can say how anything will turn out? Therein lies the only hope for redemption, discovery, and-let’s be frank—fun, fun, fun! There might be things people will get away with. And not just motel towels. There might be great illicit loves, enduring joy, faith-shaking accidents with farm machinery. But you have to not know in order to see what stories your life’s efforts bring you. The mystery is all.”