People said things they didn't mean all the time. Everybody else in the world seemed able to factor it in. But not Lena. Why did she believe the things people said? Why did she cling to them so literally? Why did she think she knew people when she clearly didn't? Why did she imagine that the world didn't change, when it did? Maybe she didn't change. She believed what people said and she stayed the same." (Lena, 211)

Women always seemed to bring the size they wished they were to the fitting room, rather than the size that would actually fit.

Luck never gives; it lends.

I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.

He no longer represented someday a possibility. He represented a road not taken a road that suddenly shot so far into the distance she couldn’t see it anymore.

There was a moment in between, a moment flung free in the midst of the transition, when he made contact. That was the moment she would dwell on.

I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.