Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.

...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Still when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life.