I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.

I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.

I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.

Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.

At twenty-eight I'd had a handful of beaux, but had only been in love once, and that had been awful enough to make me doubt men and myself for a good long while.