“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”

“While she was away, he'd forgotten how powerfully she broadcast her feelings, filling the house like a kind of nerve gas.”

“Theirs was a private language, not shared with the rest of the world, and so exempt from censure, sheer burlesque.”

“There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get.... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to sur...”