Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]

Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

Memory changes as a person matures.

Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives?

Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.

Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious.

A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.