I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.

Pain's nothing. Pain's what you give, not what you get.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.

This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.

One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.