“Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.”

“Hospitality is gold in this City; you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing like that hard case last winter.”

“Meanwhile, we’d been kicked out of school at fifteen and had worked in factories and slaughtered animals for a living, but then we’d made something of ourselves, even though the whole system was against us. So how upset could we be when clever people said we were no good?”

“It’s humbling, though, to think of all the stories that used to be, when they were at their best - before they were stories, when they were something previous, something infinitely more wonderful, brimming with potential, potent and inspired, and how they are diminished in the telling. That thing we imagine is out there cannot be captured on paper. The story is always something less than it was supposed to be, something less than when first glimpsed by the imagination.”

“I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy.”

“There is a moment in every relationship when you see the whole thing. The question is when does the moment come? Is it the first time you see the person and instinctively know that things between you are going to work out, or fail? Or is it a moment toward the end, however you get there, when you realize that there is something behind this persons eyes that you were never able to touch, no matter how hard you tried?”