“Sunset is the saddest light there is.”

“I wonder if that's the perennial story of writers: you find the true light, you lose the true light, you find it again. And maybe again.”

“the egrets lifting out of the marxh carrying the light on their backs.”

“Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I'd pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person--a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences--a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we've ever known.”

“I realize I'm trying to work out the boundaries. How to love her without interfering. How to step back and let her have her private world and yet still be an intimate part of it. When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them.”

“You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that when it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.”

“And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.”