I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.

Someday was the thing he had, because it was a lot harder to ruin than today.

When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.

Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end.

Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.

She got under the covers and put her arms around the bag. She could smell Tibby. It used to be she couldn't smell Tibby's smell in the way you couldn't smell your own; it was too familiar. But tonight she could. This was some living part of Tibby still here and she held on to it. There was more of Tibby with her here and now than in what she had seen in the cold basement room that day.

There was one thing Bridget like about guys. They took insults well.