That's the way the story goes.

"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as an escape."

"When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

"Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things,

but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well."

"The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind."

"Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive."

"Love, if this is how you choose to leave me let me let you."

"I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will."

"

Even when things end badly, there are radiant moments or experiences with failed loves that are permanently written into one’s history. Strawberries. Whenever they came into full season in spring, she remembered the day he brought her the strawberries. They were meeting at two and then driving out into the country. She’d had a harried morning in town. Her head was full of irrelevant stuff and tizzy when his car pulled to the curb in front of her. Reaching forward, she opened the door without thinking. She just wanted to be sitting still for the first time in hours, moving towards the country and silence, away from this. She needed a few seconds to grasp what was on the passenger’s seat. Beige and bright bursting red, it was a rectangular wooden box filled with three pounds of the fattest, ripest strawberries she had ever seen. They were so big, so red and sensuous, particularly against the mocha brown of the wood, that she was mesmerized. It took moments to return to the world around her. Only then did she look at him. He was grinning, thrilled that his surprise had been such a hit with her. “I saw them at a roadside stand and couldn’t resist. We’ll eat them on the way out to the country.” And they did.

Things turned ugly between them later, very ugly. But like some kind of lovely curse, after that day she could not see strawberries without thinking of him.

"