“Friendship is one of our most treasured relationships, but it isn't codified and celebrated; it's never going to give you a party.”

“He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.”

“I wanted to write a story about colonization and about Hawaii. I went to college right at the height of identity politics, and that's how I always read 'The Tempest,' for example.”

“It had always seemed to him a very plush kind of problem, a privilege, really, to consider whether life was meaningful or not.”

“But now he knew: you always sacrificed something. The question was what you sacrificed.”

“He envied this in them, this ability they had to still be awestruck, the faith they maintained that life, adulthood, would keep presenting them with astonishing experiences, that their marve...”

“Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person -- sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or fi...”

“But these were days of self-fulfilment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to...”