“I hiked up a path and into the woods, thinking about what I should be thinking about and almost having a real feelinga feeling like, this is really sad, this is a sad place to be, a sad part of my ...”

“I knew that my husband was a song that I had forgotten the words to and I was a fuzzy photograph of someone he used to love.”

“I wasn't sure if it was safe for me to be sharing time and space with other people, who all seemed so much gentler and safer and less of a secret to themselves than I felt I was.”

“My body felt like tangled rubber bands and dried-out pens and sticky paper clips, like the contents of a drawer where you put the things you don't have anywhere else to put, and I knew that the min...”

“I tried to pick the burned ones from the bowl but I didn't get many of them because I didn't make much of an effort, and even though I was taking the burned ones out because they weren't edible, I ...”

“I found, increasingly, that I did not particularly care and I tried to fake a little kindness, a little sweetness, tried to mirror Luna back at herself, but that exhausted me after a week and I con...”

“I hiked up a path and into the woods, thinking about what I should be thinking about and almost having a real feelinga feeling like, this is really sad, this is a sad place to be, a sad part of my ...”

“I sometimes wondered why I even answered the phone, but I guess I always had the hope that it would be someone else, some other way of life calling for me.”

“Maybe I will always have to love the idea of love or a concept of God more than I can love a person.”

“Miss Parkinson lived alone in a big bay-windowed house of Edwardian brick with a vast garden of decaying fruit trees and untidy hedges of gigantic size. She was great at making elderberry wine and ...”

“The child was slender as fleeting hope.”

“They passed, leaving a trail of foxfire shuffled up out of the wet leaves like stars plowed in a ship's wake.”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”