“Antoine knew what it was like to flee, to shed a life as though it were a cloak. He had learned to pack light. The less he had, the less he had to leave behind.”

“He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)”

“He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling adventure; and in a little while the stick which he had throw aside, the cloak which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he had been eased.”

“He didn’t know what he was going to — but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.”

“[he] had learned how to force his mood, to keep himself in the middle ground, neither manic nor hopeless. He seemed a bit lighter in spirit, perhaps because he had less of it. He would find peace, even if it were some compromised brand.”

“I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.”