“I was fond of him immediately, in the way we feel kinship to those who compliment us.”

“Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun.”

“We stand at the doors and look out over the yard. Hundreds of deer gaze back at us. Deer and deer and deer and deer and deer. Their blue chests heave in the dark. Their trembling cotton throats.”

“Marcel was from Louisiana, so for four years Emily had been southern by association. She insisted on Lynchburg Lemonades. She scheduled interviews around the Gators. She championed gentility. Anyone at a dinner party who thought they could tell a joke making fun of the region encountered a faceful of Emily, quick and ferocious as a convert, as a woman who loved a man. Emily now had no claim to the South. The region and its interests would proceed without her.”

“When you're alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it. As it moves through you, you can reach out your hands and feel all the edges. When it passes and you can drink coffee again you even miss it because it has been loyal to you like a boyfriend.”

“I am quitting a boy like some people quit smoking. I am not quitting smoking.”

“Once in a while, I smell Clive on my skin and it stops my day. It's a train crossing; I wait to pass. Eventually the lights stop flashing, the barriers lift. I keep moving.”