He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion into words.

He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.

When somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?