For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.

I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.

You were ambitious - for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the morning, and not for some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from an early age, you placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not your heart. I liked that about you. I liked it enormously.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.