“The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.”

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice.”

“I'm a woman. We mature faster than men, remember?”

“After dinner, Mary Alice and I went for a walk. We didn’t talk, we just held hands. I found it curious that so much of this, our last full day together, had been spent just being together. (...) [P]robably no more than two dozen words had been exchanged between us. I could sense that for the first time, the heartsoreness that had plagued me at times over the past several weeks whenever I contemplated this moment was now visiting Mary Alice. As such, we were both adrift in a sea of sadness where words seemed vapid and superfluous. A plaintive expression, a momentary gesture, a fleeting touch: these were all enough to convey thousands of words of emotion that crowded our hearts and rendered our eyes heavy with tears.”

“A garden is composed of a variety of clocks, Aritomo had once told me. Some of them run faster than the others, and some of them move slower than wee can ever perceive. I only understood this fully long after I had been his apprentice.”