And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.

The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.

Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence.

She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.