It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.

I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India.

Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.

I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.

CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room