It’s remarkable, being alive. - Michael Cunningham

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 been given with good intentions , because they exist, because they are part of a world in which one wants what one gets.

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.