“It wasn't only that you didn't see him anymore, meet him anymore. You saw his absence and encountered it as something tangible. His not being there was like the sharply outlined emptiness of a photo with a figure cut out precisely with scissors and now the missing figure is more important, more dominant than all others.”

“Danny smiles. Really smiles--like it means a lot that I'm not mad at him anymore. And then I figure out something weird: that you can be important to someone who doesn't mean much to you. But that once you find that out--that you mean something to them--it's hard not to feel that they mean something to you.”

“You don’t have to be scared anymore, Abby. We’ll figure something out, I promise. We’re in this together.”

“Miss someone until they come back, or until you come back, until their absence in your life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Miss them until you don’t have to anymore, until you’re reunited in your favorite booth in your favorite restaurant ordering your favorite meal, miss them until it feels like you never left. Or miss them until you can’t anymore, until the things you miss are identified and cataloged as things and not a person, until you figure out that easy company and long talks and unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find you again the way they found you the first time. Miss someone until you don’t.”

“And he realized... that fragile, mortal life wasn't just important to him. It was more important than his own.”

“...the absence of certainty does not mean that one interpretation is as valid as any other. Probabilities and plausibilities matter; and when the evidence is less precise or less tangible than we would like it to be, some explanations are still more likely than others.”