"She was going to leave my life at the same moment that I came into hers, I thought." (1, 11)

"I'd put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me." (2, 29)

"There was the woman I was before my mom died and the one I was now, my old life sitting on the surface of me like a bruise." (2, 33/34)

"Every now and then I could see myself—truly see myself—and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was the woman with the hole in her heart." (3, 38)

"I was here. I could begin at last." (4, 49)

"The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was...