“The little things we value as mundane or pithy usually turn into the big things in hindsight…an “I love you” called out as the door closes, a walk around the same block with the same friend, Grandma’s chocolate cake every time you visit…the brush of skin on skin as two loves pause to breath in sync. Life isn’t made up of miles, but memories. Cherish them while you’re making them, not just after you can’t make those memories anymore.”

“Because the truth is, I wouldn’t care if she lied to me, except for the fact that I love her. And once you love someone, you can’t really put up with them lying to you. It just doesn’t work. It makes things into a big mess.”

“They were like those deep-sea creatures with watery, transparent skin: you could see the soft little jerking beans of their hearts, you understood that the very thing that was supposed to protect them was the thing that made them vulnerable, and you knew you couldn’t help them, so you decided to love them instead.”

“But Wine doesn’t make anything go away! When you bury a big memory it’s always still there, like an itch right down inside your bones where you can’t scratch it, or somebody walking a step behind you that you can’t look at. And . . . and if we didn’t remember things we wish we hadn’t done, wouldn’t we just run off and do them again?”

“In our memories, there is a graveyard where we bury our dead. They all lie there together, the loved ones and the ones we hated, friends and foes and kin, with no distinction among them. We have to mourn every one of them, because our memories have made them as much a part of us as our bones or our skin. If we don't, we've no right to remember anything at all.”

“One of the best things about having children is that it enables you to have the same loving memories as another person - you can summon the same past. Two flashbacks but with a single image.”