How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked. Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.

All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.

He took comfort in the neon signs, the wild strands of jazz creeping out of clubs whenever happy swells of people pushed through the doors in their finery.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.

You couldn't be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.

Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.

I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.