How strange it was that a dream, once realized, could quickly turn mundane.

Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.

Her throat is tight with fear. She is afraid of how this man, this stranger, has already changed the sensation of being alive. She is afraid he will slip away.

She had seen too many movies; she did not understand that love was a choice, entered and exited by free will and with careful consideration, not a random thunderbolt sent from above.

When they are alone, lying quietly, he holds her the way a child holds a stuffed animal: for comfort, for security, out of a primate’s urge to cling, to close one’s arms around a warm, soft object.

...the freeway looks like a ruby bracelet stretched alongside a diamond one, looks like a rive of lava flowing counter to a river of champagne bubbles.[Hadley Baxter]

But their truce, their wary tenderness, began to give way as winter thawed: the inevitable collapse of goodwill between two people with intertwined yet irreconcilable wishes.

This was truly advanced WASP: how to comfort a wronged wife and mother without acknowledging any misdeeds done or embarrassment caused by loved ones.

The world unfurls and unfurls, and there is always more. A line, a circle, is insufficient. I look forward, and there is the horizon. I look back. Horizon. What's past is lost. I am already lost to my future.[Marian Graves]

We think each new romantic prospect, each new lover, is a fresh start, but really we're just tacking into the wind, each new trajectory determined by the last, plotting a jagged yet unbroken line of reactions through our lives.[Hadley Baxter]