When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and about how safe I was.

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254

I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.

But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death — the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human — feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light - all of it part of navigating the unknown.

Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole.

but, he also said it because part of him wanted more of her, this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

I fell in love with you again; While you were away - Jack Salmon