“Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.”

“Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red.”

“He was nothing but a conduit, after all, and there isn't a culvert in the world that remembers the water flowed through it once the rain has stopped.”

“Rivers of wrinkles flowing down from the corners of this eyes and mouth.”

“Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.”

“Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him..”

“He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.”