“He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.”

“I could ask him if he think "a lot" means the same as "too many"...I could tell him that he shouldn't call a girl a slut because someday she might be somebody's mother...maybe she's a slut because she's lonely, she's sad, she's hoping someone or something will make the lonely and sad go away.”

“...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.”

“Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.”

“And we'd look at each other the way you do when you see someone on the street you think you recognize, but not quite. Someone you wish with all your heart were there but who is actually just a stranger. And you feel a kind of deep longing that hurts like a huge gash and your inability to fix it leaves you frustrated and angry and bone-deep lonely.”

“They were lonely and sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could, with great care, make a world that would accommodate their loneliness.”