Marnie loved her better and more honestly than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of her mother, who loved her intensely if not honestly.

Gestating characters feels something like the mental equivalent of gestating a baby. In both cases, to create them you lose yourself. Or at least you reshape yourself to encompass them.

You just have to let people love you in the way they can

Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was beginning to suspect that she was permitting herself to mourn this long separation only now that it was over.

Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.

People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them.