She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

-Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.

I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

They're just memories now. Time to write them off.