You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you couldn’t decide exactly what to feel. That was the trouble with letting them in at all. They made a mess of the place.

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.

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

Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.

For the first time she saw that the nurse's name was Tabitha.

Wish for what you want, work for what you need. -Carmen's grandmother

Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.