Reconstructing Amelia

I had gone through other things before—good and terrible, funny and awful—and I had survived.

But it’s a lot harder to forgive someone who’s not looking to apologize.

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” Virginia Woolf

‘A piece of knowledge is never false or true—but only more or less biologically and evolutionary useful.

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Instead, I pressed my fingers to my mouth, trying to hold the kiss inside.

“ ‘What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil,’ ” Sylvia recited from the book she was reading.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how fast the current’s moving until you’re headed over a waterfall.”

Somebody who went to that much trouble not to talk about something probably had too much to say.

Kate had sometimes worried that Amelia’s obsession with books was a sign of loneliness.