It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.

Time. There seems to be vast quantities of the stuff spooling around me in all directions, everywhere i look. Days and hours. Weeks and minutes. Years. The hard part, ive discovered, is filling it.

You sense that he's dangerous but don't now why - and wonder if it's because he makes you feel safer than you've ever felt.

The writing is clean. I really wouldn't have changed a word. Most of it is true, too, except that the hero quits drinking and the girl grows up. On the last page, the couple gets married, which is a nice way for a love story to end.

I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief.

She seems sort of lost.' I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.

I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced-the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again.