"Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are."

"We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other"

"I love her and it’s the beginning and end of everything."

"When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?"

"Part of the problem was that I thought you might be able to change into something else. Another part is that you’re hardly worth writing about anymore. And being free of that, I have a new, more reasonable agony."

"You got what you wanted but you lost what you had"

"

You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.”

“Not ever?” I ask.

Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.

"

"I realized that her life, her feelings for things, had been ruined along the way and that I was no more than a temporary companion. She was mortally hurt by the past and the present; she treated me badly. She brought me immense pain, continually. She lied, stole, there was desertion, other men, yet we had our moments. And our little soap opera ended with her in a coma in the hospital and I sat at her bed for hours talking to her, and then she opened her eyes and saw me: “I knew it would be you,” she said. Then she closed her eyes. The next day she was dead. I drank alone for two years after that."

"I have died too many times. Believing and waiting, waiting in a room, staring at a cracked ceiling waiting for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound. Going wild inside. While she danced with strangers in nightclubs - out of the arms of one love, and into the arms of another"

"That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability, or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are."