A fear Paul had transformed all these years, like a gifted alchemist, into anger and rebellion.

Either things grow and change or they die.

It's good to be in love.

This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.

He fished in his pocket for his keys and instead pulled out the last geode, gray and smooth, earth-shaped. He held it, warming in his palm, thinking of all mysteries the world contained: layers of stone, concealed beneath the flesh of earth and grass; these dull rocks, with their glimmering hidden hearts.

...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.

Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.