The things of the world knew so much more than we did and lived them more truly. The thorn trees had no grief or fear. The constellations didn’t fight or hold themselves back, nor did the translucent hook of the moon. Everything was momentary and endless.

The very rich only admire themselves.

I wish I could break into pieces,” I told him one night, just a week after I’d come back. “That would feel better somehow. Isn’t the worst when you can keep on walking and breathing and writing letters and going to the market and all the things you do when you’re alive, but really you’re blown apart?

Is it nice? It’s hard to care about people. You end up fretting all the time and feeling helpless, hoping they’ll live forever. Only no one does.

Have you ever seen stars like this? You can’t have. They don’t make them like this anywhere in the world.” Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders – and though these were the only ones I had ever known, I believed Denys when he said they were the finest. I thought I might believe anything he said, in fact, even though we had just met. He had that in him.

Maybe that’s the secret to surviving all sorts of trouble, knowing who you are apart from it, I mean.

We’re all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren’t your own person at all – are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy.” She was referring to Jock, but her words made me think of other things, too. “Are you happy, Karen?” “Not yet. But I mean to be.

Maybe we are always all of our ages at once, like nesting matryoshka dolls?

The way I see it, how can you really say you’ll love a person longer than love lasts?

Sorry was maybe the loneliest feeling of all, I understood, because it only brought you back to yourself.