“You only live at once." Which seemed to her all the more reason to be careful, to take it easy, to have an ordinary life.”

“I tried to live cautiously - or eventually learned to try to live - in a spirit of regret prevention, and I could not see how Bonnie could accomplish such a thing in this situation. Regret - operatic, oceanic, fathomless - seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took, regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong. It had already begun.”

“The situation was not easy for her, they knew. Once, at the start of last semester, she had skipped into her lecture hall singing "Getting to Know You" - both verses. At the request of the dean the chairman had called her into his office, but did not ask her for an explanation, not really. He asked her how she was and then smiled in an avuncular way. She said, "Fine," and he studied the way she said it, her front teeth catching on the inside of her lower lip. She was almost pretty, but her face showed the strain and ambition of always having been close but not quite.”

“I said nothing. If she wasn't careful, everyone would rush out of her life, life out of a burning building.”

“Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.”

“I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.”

“She would try to live life one day at a time, like an alcoholic--drink, don't drink, drink. Perhaps she should take drugs.”