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.

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

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

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

Nothing hurts if you don't let it.

You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.

This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel.