“Exactly. How can you know it makes you happy if youve never experienced it?There are different kinds of happy, she said. Some kinds dont need any proof.”

“It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories the...”

“Childhood memories were like airplane luggage; no matter how far you were traveling or how long you needed them to last, you were only ever allowed two bags”

“Suddenly, it seemed there were about a million times he was supposed to have kissed her, even without the benefit of a script, even without any sort of direction.”

“It was exactly as hed thought it would be, like the first time and the millionth time all at once, like being wide awake, like losing his balance. Only this time, it wasnt just him; this time, they...”

“It took a moment to right himself, and he pulled his shoulders back as he regained his equilibrium. He didn't want to be half asleep the first time he kissed Ellie. For that, he wanted to be wide a...”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”

“No. Ye loved him. I canna hold it against either of you that ye mourn him. And it gives me some comfort to know ..." He hesitated, and I reached up to smooth the rumpled hair off his face."To know ...”

“In his arms Ive finally found the place Ive been looking for, where fear cant touch me, where memories cant reach, where the past is forgotten and the present is enough. Where the present is, in fa...”

“Our relationship with the world can only be better when we know ourselves well!”