The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.

It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.

Alice suspected Paul couldn’t really picture his father, just like she couldn’t picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world.

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.

When I turned fifteen, I remember my father gave me a credit card which I was allowed to use for two things: emergencies and books.

It was wrong. But it was worth it.