She hated this feeling, the sensation of trying and failing to get her arms around something big. The way political opinions seemed always to be expressed with a total sureness of tone. The way that sureness was at odds with every true thought she’d ever had.

You disintegrated into the recriminations, the headlines, the pictures. You scattered yourself into proofs, warnings, suspicions, arrests. You rode out into the dark outrage of others, saw human loss shaped towards political ends, and though you hoped for the occasional gleam of uncontaminated compassion it seemed that the world was dimming.

Viv used to say there were two types of person in life, past tense and present tense. Viv had seen herself as a present-tense person, which gave her an excuse never to discuss what she felt about a thing that had already happened.

It is always better to clear the air, even if the air often stinks.

What you thought would work and what will work are often different.

We were happy we could build something for Brian that would allow him to pursue something he wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Card debts peaked in the fourth and first quarters but now the problem has been kept under control.

When we first started, we went through multiple ideas. We thought we had a vision of what we wanted to do.

...life amounts, above all else, to the recruiting of witnesses.

Andrew [Haswell Green]...thought of his impending travel on the brig. Of Samuel Tilden. Of why the friendship had vanished, the errors he must have made, too many signs of affection, or of desperation, neediness, the most appalling of all impressions to make on a fellow man. His only available course now was to put distance between his failures and his future, tighten the stranglehold on his feelings, and harden his heart protectively against the pain of further great mistakes.