I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first.

Do you have any idea how much I've loved you?

Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that.

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.

A lot of friendship is about practice, that’s something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older. It’s not simply some spiritual soul-bond of memories and longings, it’s really about having coffee every week, or talking on the phone every day or every other day - whatever suits you.

Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.