“The saxophone is the cocaine of the woodwind family, the sax teacher continues. Saxophonists are admired because they are dangerous, because they have explored a darker, more sinister side of thems...”

“If I have learned one thing from experience, it is this: never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.”

“I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.”

“To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt.”

“Fiction is supposed to be immersive and supposed to be entertaining and narrative, so structures have to be buried a little bit. If they come foregrounded too much, it stops being fiction and start...”

“Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.”

“Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere.”

“What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?”

“What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”

“For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.”

“I missed him so much that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place.”