“And now I want to get yesterday down while I still have the awful taste of it”

“I wasn't thinking of Tom but of myself. And of a self who seemed to be mot 'me' but 'she.' An innocent, moving fecklessly through the days, knowing nothing, whom I saw now with awful wisdom. ... I had hesitated to make this journey, had put it off year after year but had known always that eventually it must be undertaken. And, confronted at last with the mirage -- with the shining phantom of that other time -- I was surprised to find that it was myself that was the poignant presence.”

“So now we are young still but a better sort of young.”

“You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not - life has been lived but it is still all going on, in the mind for better and for worse.”

“I have no idea where I am going, she thought, but I have begun.”

“Thinks that it is a poor sort of life that has not known expectation, the pleasure of savoring ahead. So enjoy it while you have it, he tells himself.”

“If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.”