“For years, he’s been listening to her complain about being ignored by Justin and assuring it her it was simply a matter of time until his friend saw the light. After all, if Henry was friends with Neerja and Henry was friends with Justin then, logically, Justin would be friends with Neerja. According to Henry, their eventual relationship was dictated by the transitive property.But Neerja didn’t want to be ‘just friends’ with Justin, and she was tired of waiting for the transitive property to jump-start her love life.”

“The most powerful sex organ was the brain, you know what that meansPoor Justin!”

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”

“Justine reached for a fresh tissue and clamped it to Lucy’s nose as if she was a child. “Friends are the support bras of life. We don’t let each other down. Right?”

“Justine pulled her Jag over to the side of the road and stared out at the landscape. I twirled the dial on her police band radio until the signal was clear. She opened her thermos, passed it over to me. I took a sip. The coffee was black, unsugared. That's the way Justine liked just about everything: straight up, no bullshit.”

“I focused on the passing houses filled with couples who’d somehow survived this teenage craziness of ‘he likes her but she likes him and he likes somebody else, you just can’t win.’ How did they do it? How did they end up in their golden, warm and cozy living rooms with their 2.3 children and dogs and cats? Because getting from where I was to where they were seemed millions of light years away.”

“Like the garlic mustard in my garden and the roses on my fence, love has a funny way of blooming after years of being buried.”