She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.

It's funny how things seem different, suddenly.

Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.

It's good to be in love.

There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news.

You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.

She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.