“Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not towisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”

“The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”

“We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place...”

“Scar tissue, she'd once read, was the strongest of all tissues. Maybe Soren's heart was so strong because it was so scarred.”

“That's the way it is: life includes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.”

“Sometimes, inflexibility creates a callus, scarring over all the bitterness and disappointment improperly, and there is no honest way to break that silence or that infinite distance, not even in death, not even in memory.”