“It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us”

“... perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead...”

“So, what do you think they'll do to him?" I ask. Prim sounds about a thousand years old when she speaks. "Whatever it takes to break you.”

“Can any of us pinpoint the moment when we've lost our younger selves, lost joy in the simple things, stopped celebrating life? For years-decades-we work, raise a family, plant begonias. Then one day we wake up to chemotherapy and eulogies and nursing home visits and the realization that we haven't had a real vacation in years. And all we can do is ask: how did life get so hard?”

“We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

“We tried to act familiar, which meant we couldn't ask the kind of questions that might have helped us figure each other out and year after year the distance grew.”