Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.

I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.

She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who'd lost nothing, was not.

How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?

She'd loved him as much as he'd let her. More than he'd let her.

Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.

It took the real thing to show you the size of your delusions.