As much as some people would like to believe, for their own peace of mind, that the appearance of evil in this world had a clean cause, the truth was never that simple.

It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

It was what accidental deaths did to people, made everybody's sea floor irregular and uneven, causing tidal currents to collide, surge upward, thereby resulting in small yet volatile eddies churning at everybody's surface. (In the more dangerous cases, it created a lasting whirlpool in which the strongest swimmers could drown.)

To be next to her was to have everything.

…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.

But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars.

Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.