“It's curious that I can't stomach half an hour of television, in general, but I can spend the better half of an hour watching water fall from the heavens. Why do you suppose that is?”

“If I die tonight it will be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds...,why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world.”

“Do you write novels?" I said."Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.”

“The time that I spend in hospital is so dauntingly real that it makes my activities and emotions outside of working hours feel childish and superficial, like a sitcom, a half-hour television comedy.”

“When he says "Skins or blankets?" it will take you a moment to realized that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two—was it hours or days or weeks? But the payoff, now, will be to see it fall across one of your white breasts. It's December, and your skin is never really warm, so you will pull the bulk of it around you and pose for him, pose for his camera, without having to narrate this moose's death.”

“I kind of grew up, not in, but sort of believing in a fairy tale world. I went from place to place all my life looking for it but not finding it; at least not for me. But here, this is it! This is the best anyone could hope for. I know it’s not always sunshine and roses for you but this is like heaven to someone like me. Please don’t ever take it for granted. The love you all have for each other, it just blows my mind.”

“But I can’t leave, not yet. I’ll stay with her until sunrise. If I brace my feet, I won’t slide. I can rest my cheek on the roof tile and still see her. Pacing. Pulling her hair. “I’ll fix you,” I tell her. “I promise.” Even though I don’t know how.It’s better than good-bye.”