“At twenty-eight I'd had a handful of beaux, but had only been in love once, and that had been awful enough to make me doubt men and myself for a good long while.”

“I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.”

“It had been a false spring, a lie like all the other lies, and I found myself wondering it it would ever really come.”

“I'd like it if you could love me for a little while at least.”

“They had as good a shot at making it as anyone did, but what if marriage didn't solve anything and didn't save anyone even a little bit? What then?”

“He and I had already had our time, and though it was still very close and real to me, as beautiful and poignant as any place on a map, it was, in truth, another time—another country.”

“This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel.”