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

...bleak territory of the heart.

...so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.

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.

The place was a familiar as breath but as far from his life now as the moon.

That there were other worlds, invisible, unknown, beyond imagination even, was a revelation to him.

You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.