Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.

Oh, all stories are the same, aren't they? Men and women fall in love or out of love. People are born; people die. It al ends happily or it all ends sadly, and the difference matters only to the people involved.

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.

if you were older you might agree with me. you might say that real love steals nothing. you might say that real love leaves a person intact. you would be wrong, jane. love is a greedy toddler who knows only the word 'mine.

Daddy once said, "If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul.

Betty inhales sharply, 'It's just I thought I had lost you forever.' Oh, Betty, don't you know there's no such thing as forever?

Our moment had passed somehow. I was different. He was, too. Without our “madness” to unite us, there wasn’t anything much there. Or maybe too much had happened in too short a time. It’s like when you take a trip with someone you don’t know very well. Sometimes you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realise all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travellers, if that makes any sense.