Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.

I've come to realize that life, while being everything, is also strangely not much. Except when the light shines on it a different way and then you realize it's a lot after all!

She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love.

She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.

When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with.