“At forty-three, I bought my first house. I’d wanted one like crazy. A house meant family, a happy childhood for my litttle girl and for the little girl self inside me. . . . I was soon overwhelmed by the upkeep and overcome by the yardwork. . . . In the bright light of closing, it was obvious: it was never a house I wanted; it was what a house symbolized to me. (254)”

“Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250)”

“There was something of Francis in the boy, something pure and genuine and flawed. That type didn't think twice before running headlong into a burning house or a young girl's arms.”

“The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me, the words tumbling into my head quietly like falling leaves.I.Am.Crazy.This is my new shameful truth. Something changed yesterday. A door has been opened that I can never close again. I touch my reflection, the glass smooth and cold, not really believing that the girl I see is me.”

“Caz doesn’t like ‘nearness’. It makes her extremely irascible. In a three-bedroom council house with seven people in it, she is almost perpetually furious.”

“A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with—that’s poverty—but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148)”

“There are probably some girls who don't want guys to show up at their house randomly on a Tuesday night with questions about Edwin Schrödinger. I am sure such girls exist. But they don't live at my house.”