one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.

I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly.

You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

And Clare, always Clare.

Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other.

that's what I love you for: your inability to perceive all my hideous flaws