“They’d scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own terms—not just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating.”

“Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual- if one things about it, it's really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn't think things through.”

“I don't know how to describe it, but after the blush of my own company wore off, I became so aware of Earnest's absence it was as if the lack of him had moved into the apartment with me.”

“He was such an enigma, really - fierce and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true.”

“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.”

“I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.”

“I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap.”