“She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

“She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.”

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”

“It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

“It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen.
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause she's lived it ten times or more.”

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”