'Cause I'm just - I want to go to Amsterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don't want my particular life, and also the sky is depressing me, and there is this old swing set out here that my dad made for me when I was a kid.' 'I must see this old swing set of tears immediately,' he said. 'I'll be over in twenty minutes.'

Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.

And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.

We fell. We got up. We ran.

I said nothing—I hadn’t known Marya, and anyway, “listening quietly” was my general social strategy

No reason to be angry. Anger just distracts from the all-encompassing sadness.

Girls think they’re only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I’m going over to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him.