“She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.”

“She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing.”

“It was like the time her sister suggested she read Emily Dickinson to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Once certain thoughts got into your head, you couldn't get rid of them. ”

“Sometimes Holly could start to see the order in things, she got a glimmer of a pattern. And that thing everyone seems to say these days, about how things always happen for a reason- Holly was getting close to being willing to concede that that was maybe, possibly true.”

“Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.”

“Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them.”

“It was awful, but it's over. And now I feel like I'm finally coming up for air.""Yes, well, it's been a very stressful time for both of us," said Leonard."How has it been stressful for you? said Holly."I had that move."Holly just looked at him."What," said Leonard."You moved apartments" said Holly.”