“But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps its best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself...”

“It seems we need someone to know us as we are--with all we have done--and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. ...for......”

“But even then I knew how it was going to be, I could feel the coming silence in the long, poisonous pauses that expanded as the night progressed.”

“And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when youre poised exactly betwe...”

“This was all of it, no doubt, the strange passing feeling that had come to me in the boat. Age. Vanity. The impossibility of accepting the new versions of oneself that life kept offering. The impos...”

“And what if wed been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if wed been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasnt ...”

“You are there with me, aren't you? I and my silences keep talking about you.”