"The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down."

"If you looked round the rooms, you wouldn't think there was anything missing. But it's like one of those Spot the difference cartoons in a puzzle book. The changes are so subtle, yet glaringly obvious once you've seen them. A photo missing here, a cup there. A heart a bit more broken than it was before."

"It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand. ('A Father's Story')."

"Do You think it matters if they're tiny or deep? He asked. Well, if they're not tiny breaths and they're not deep breaths, then they're just ... Breaths. Then you're just breathing for the sake of ... Breathing. ... Seize them. Feel them. Love them ..."

"Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one."

"Otherwise the silence in the room was profound, the silence of places Brian had not yet been: gazing at the lifeless body of a beloved, the echo of a lost illusion, the tinnitus of betrayal."