Beginnings are so important. Just finding that right moment to introduce this character, this world, it’s everything.

Marriage," she said quietly, "is the most expensive ticket to nowhere

Kate's unhappiness was like weather, a storm rolling constantly toward or away from her, a force she could feel approaching like a hum of electrical current across her skin before it broke open, soaking her in sadness, and she would have no choice but to brace against the misery until it wore itself out on her and passed on to someone else.

You tell us about your other friends. You feel guilty speaking about them, but you are annoyed, frustrated. You don't always trust their motives. You feel pressured by their demands on you. You're worn out by the effort it takes to be with them, to feign interest in their stream of never-ending problems.

We would pay the bills. We would pretend to be high-class. This was compromise. This, I guessed, was business.

At home, Tommy tried to avoid looking too long at himself in the mirror, for his reflection stirred in him a feeling of great loneliness and a fear that this loneliness might be permanent.

It's like, when someone asks you how you are and even though you want to say that you feel like shit, that you're miserable, that you cry until you gag and spend most of your time imagining ways to kill yourself, instead you just say, 'Fine, thanks.

And in that foggy place between sleep and waking, he could have been anyone. That was what she liked most about him: In the darkness, he became whomever she wanted.

You live like comfortable strangers. Like characters in a play.

They will stare. They will stand to the side and watch her be alone.

In my room, I looked around at all the pieces of my life, neat and tidy on their little shelves, my clothes and books and telephones, my shoes and hair barrettes, and tried to care about them. Mine, mine, mine. But they were only things, things that could have belonged to anyone.

That was the real bitch about time: Everything true would become false, if only you waited long enough.