“At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.”

“... Well, some day i'm going to get in with that wild artistic group. It's the only thing that makes this town different.""The 'wild artistic group,' as you put it, has an average age of fifty-seven, and most of us have heart disease and bladder trouble...”

“Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.”

“You said, "Ellie, this is the truth, everybody leaves. Everybody." I was just seven, and when I reached for you, you were death and absence and missing take you. You were where bad husbands disappear to. And you were whispering. "Just ask them.”

“Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward.“You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.”

“Think like a middle-aged man with OCD, a dead wife, and a teenage daughter.Think like a woman with three teenage sons who once ran a golf cart into the side of their granddad's house.""Cameron and Sean shouldn't have let me drive," Adam said in his own defense. "I was seven.""You shouldn't have ASKED to drive. You were seven.”