“This is my first . . . ah . . .” “Haunting?” he offered. I snorted. “Yes, this is my first haunting.” “Then I’m flattered.”

“Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time.”

“My existence is colorless when I’m not imagining you. You haunt me, Annabelle. ”

“We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.”

“I’m haunted by all the space that I will live without you.”

“I left you clean. Purged of all your ghosts. I am the one who has been haunted all my life. Haunted by you.”