I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.

But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.

I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.

And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.