One must have a good memory to keep the promises one has made.

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

Something about giving in without a fight felt wrong.

Love who you love while you have them. That's all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you'll never run out.

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time . . . We are everywhere.

Knowing where she was in the world, even if he never touched her, gave him a deep satisfaction, and he half despised himself for being satisfied with so little.

Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.