For most humans throughout history, "more" wasn't even an option. "Enough" was the goal and was, by definition, enough.

He liked the past. He also liked the future. It was the present that was the problem.

That's what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we're able.

LIfe is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.

"Tell me what you want me to say" he said finally.
"I can't. That's not how it works."

He has the sense that if he put his hands out, his palms would touch some invisible material that separates him from other people.

Sometimes he looked at her across the table and was overwhelmed by a sucking feeling; it was like turning a kaleidoscope of memories until the patternes clicked, a tunnel thorugh time to a place he thought he'd never see again.

The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.

I was born to wish for more than I can have.

It hit me pretty hard, how there's no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning.

A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing.

Growing up was bloody overrated. If I could have my time over again, I'd be more careful with it. I wouldn't let it slip thorugh my careless fingers like flour.

I know my father loves me, I know my mother does not. I know that I have to reap what I have sown, it's only fair. I am the mother of five children grown and gone in the blink of an eye. I am the sitting tenant of one farm, the wife to one husband, the fool to one lover. I have an empty nest, an empty lap, empty arms, a hollow heart.

Lose a person. Gain a ghost.

As I stared at him, I felt compelled to write his name on everything. On every blade of grass, on each rung of the water tower ladder, on all of the leaves of the tree beside us. I wanted his name on all these things and more. I was so afraid no one would know he had even existed.

'Don't look back. Go in the car and don't look back.'
'Looking back is all I've got,' he said.

'We had the party. We had our story.' He liftet his glass and walked to the garden wall for a better view of the city. 'That's it - the whole mad thing.' He looked at the miles of buildings. 'It's like an explosion of life happening and then it's gone'.

They say you know nothing at eighteen. But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again.

He was dulling himself. He drank like that, too: as if oblivion was a perfect place to be by yourself.

'I totally love those words,' he said, 'and I wish they were mine'.