“If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.”

“He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he’d known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace.”

“Because it was just too creepy to consider the alternative: nothing changing at all, everything shrinking into the sad belated recognition that the best days had come and gone without her even realizing it.”

“He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.”

“After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.”

“Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.”

“Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures…”