Alice doesn't seem to mind because she's laughing too, and biting her lip, all doe-eyed, and tossing her freshly washed hair, and Norton tosses his lovely, glossy hair back, and she tosses her hair in return, and he tosses his, and she tosses hers, and it;s like some mating ritual on a wildlife program.

…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another.

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath.

She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.