“But I remember the place with fondness ... not perfect but, all in all, not a bad memory.”

“But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and ...”

“This is what dating is like, I thought, this horrible mix of boredom and fear and humiliation and confusion.”

“Change rarely happens in doses large enough to choke you. Everyday you swallow a little more and expect a little less.”

“I might not yet be falling in love, but I might be flirting with the promise of love, the idea of love, the making of a place in my heart for love, though it may have been more a wish than a promise.”

“The feeling of freedom, driving into scenery as green and lush as a postcard of Ireland was close to bliss.”

“For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas....”

“It frightens me that I can't do anything sensible about it.""Are you scared that you'll wind up with a boring job where you have to see the same people every day and drink instant coffee?""I'm more...”

“She'd be dead before the memories and pain were finally gone; she knew it, accepted it, and dealt with it.”

“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 ...”

“It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be”

“We cannot escape the longing, no matter what life we choose. Were either longing for people, places or times gone by, which are essentially the same things: memories. And, whether or not we travel,...”

“What seems real one moment is fiction the nextand gone out of existence the moment after that.Nostalgia is the greatest enemy of truth,and change our only constancy.”