Polly was pretty good at dieting, all right, but she was beginning to wonder whether you ever lost the parts of your self that you wanted to lose.

She used to cry roughly three times a year. Now she seemed to cry three times before breakfast. Could that be considered progress?

The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.

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.

You are not going to die, I know I said I'd let you, but I can't.

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing.

It’s natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily most gracefully. So here’s me asking you to please not make that mistake.