“It wasn't luck or the order of the universe. It was simply what had happened.”

“He smiled hesitantly and she smiled back in the same fashion, but he was unsettled by the thought that Muriel had undergone a transformation. Some of the stuff that had come out of her mouth lately, about God or babies, made him wonder if she’d had a brain transplant at some point in the last ten years. It was funny what happened to people after forty, when they realized that our place here on earth was leased, not owned.”

“Life is simply experience; for reasons not readily discerned, we attempt to go on.”

“I am a law student in my first year at the law, and there are many moments when I am simply a mess.”

“Nobody ever gets what they want when it comes to love.”

“After a week, it's better. I miss her. I mourn her. But some peace has returned. She had been so unattainable - so young, so much a citizen of a different era - that it is hard to feel fully deprived.”

“Every American is from somewhere else. Each is hated for what he brings that is different from the rest. We live in uneasy peace. But it is peace, for the most part. ”