Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.

...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.

What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?

When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.

Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.