“I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.”

“I'd chosen instead to just change my route, gomiles out of the way, as ifavoiding it would make it go away once and for all.”

“Not that I regretted having Annie; I'd never felt that way for a second. I just regretted that I'd never had a chance to live the life I'd thought I was supposed to.”

“I'm not trying to be weird, I swear! But if I'd had a choice between "weird" and "ordinary", I'd still have chosen weird anyway.”

“I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about journey, maybe, but not the destination.”

“For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget.”