“Against these forces -- an earth rotating, a sun lowering its angle in the sky, winds filling with rain and the geese arriving -- time is just a made-up thing, and recedes in importance, and should.”

“The most important things of your life can change so suddenly, so unrecoverably, that you can forget even the most important of them and their connections, you are so taken up by the chanciness of all's that happened and by all that could and will happen next.”

“It was as if I'd already left some time before and was just catching up with myself.”

“And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.”

“the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer that nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.”

“At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made--like light we see emitted from stars.”

“Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.”