Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway. She is loved, she thinks, in more or less the way the gifts will be appreciated: because they have be… - Michael Cunningham

A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.

He says, 'I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.'
'You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all.'
'But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and then you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. I'm so sick.

Peter glances out at the falling snow. Oh, little man. You have brought down your house not through passion but by neglect. You who dared to think of yourself as dangerous. You are guilty not of the epic transgressions but the tiny crimes. You have failed in the most base and human of ways - you have not imagined the lives of others.