“You lose everything you love in the order in which you love it.”
“It was hard to admit that those days were over, but it was hard to admit that any days were over, that the days themselves didn't stretch like pulled taffy and sag to the floor.”
“It was clear that in a past life the detective had been a phone booth beside an empty highway.”
“In the kitchen he ate a pear. It occurred to him that, though he had eaten hundreds of pears in the past, if not thousands, this pear was different from every single one he had ever eaten, wholly unique, and, in fact, as he ate it, he was opening parts of the pear that had never been experienced by anyone, human or animal. When his maxillary incisors pierced the skin, which first protected the fruit as it had against the rain and sun and then yielded to the invasion, he was oxygenating particles that had never even been open to oxygen. The wet fruit and seeds had existed in darkness for their entire lives until he tore them out with his teeth.”
“No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home.”
“He thought of the feeling of receiving oxygen from a mask and the calming sensation it brought, partly because of the concentrated gas but partly too because he could hear his muffled lungs expelling their product within the mask, and it reminded him that he was breathing, that the gas was flowing at all times but most importantly at that moment, a constant and essential truth. His lips and lungs and teeth were witness to the passage of breath.”
“Her body swelled and stilled. There would be a moment when she would breathe for the last time. An exhalation. There would be that moment, her prize of air, her still lake, her sweet boat floating away away, her body warping wood, swale and heavy, a sinking thing. He sat beside her, a helpless observer, his only power in witness, some bleak ability to watch and record the event in his own brain, which sent the order to his lungs to breathe with her while she still breathed, channels rising, sparks of interior electrical connection fading with the mind's fool hope that it could create some kind of measurable response, to provide some worth of warmth. Her body beside his, swell and still. He thought of her still. He thought of holding her absolutely still. He loved, he loved her. He loved her, still.”
“I hate to state the obvious,” said Chico, “but you vomited into that cup after I asked you a question.”
“Don’t you wear glasses, George?” “Not anymore. I had my eyes lasered.” Can you say midlife crisis? Radial keratotomy is the new red Porsche.”
“What are you thinking of discovering?"
Moomintroll cleared his throat and felt very proud. "Oh, everything," he said. "Stars, for example!"
Snufkin was deeply impressed.
"Stars!" he exclaimed. "Then I must come with you. Stars are my favorite things. I always lie and look at them before I go to sleep, and wonder who is on them and how one could get there. The sky looks so friendly with all those little eyes twinkling in it.”
“Exfiltrations are like abortions," I said. "You don't need one unless something's gone wrong. If you need one, don't try to do it yourself. We can give you a nice, clean job.”
“mean that if you spend your time putting the love of your heart into what you do for those who are not your friends, you may often be disappointed and discouraged. But if you keep on trying you will find your happiness in loving, whether you are loved back or not.”
“You shouldn’t assume everything you don’t understand is a message,”
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