“I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out at my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.”

“Her father had admired her mother without ever truly understanding her. And her mother--her mother had relied on her father without appreciating him. There had been a gulf between them that couldn't be bridged by all the goodwill in the world.”

“Well, that's the thing about choices, isn't it? There are always more to make. I've never seen a street where you couldn't cross to the other side.”

“(He remembered resting against her afterward, listening to the beat of her heart, taking her breath into his lungs, and thinking that he was the luckiest man in the world, that you couldn't connect with a human being any more perfectly than that. And sure enough, he'd been right.)”

“This was what she couldn't get enough of, not if she lived forever: Harry on her skin, Harry's grateful kisses on her neck, Harry and Olive, teeming and sated, brimming over with each other, as if this house and this world had been built by God's hands for their love alone.”

“I find a woman with brains enormously attractive and not threatening in the least. A pretty face is nice, too, but having somebody to converse with and share thoughts for thirty or forty years is very appealing to me.”

“One can follow the sun, of course, but I have always thought that it is best to know some winter, too, so that the summer, when it arrives, is the more gratefully received.”

“I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out at my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.”