Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being remembered again.

How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?" Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.

Your problem isn't the problem, it's your attitude about the problem.

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time

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)

I look back on my 20s. It's supposed to be the prime of your life, the most vital, the most beautiful. But you're making your critical decisions and sometimes your most critical mistakes.

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.