Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college.

Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.

He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday--that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body.

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.

Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault.

Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer - that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with the people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.