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1 " There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world. "
― Audrey Niffenegger , Her Fearful Symmetry
2 " Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude. "
3 " That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand. "
4 " You're my phantom limb, Mouse. I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid, Mouse. Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me. "
5 " When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing. "
6 " He would say her name over and over until it devolved into meaningless sounds - mah REI kuh, mah REI kuh - it became an entry in a dictionary of loneliness. "
7 " He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all. "
8 " Listen, sometimes when you finally find out, you realize that you were much better off not knowing. "
9 " You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried. "
10 " What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing. "
11 " Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson "
12 " I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson. "
13 " Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead? "
14 " He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by. "
15 " That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living. "
16 " Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see? "
17 " He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it. "
18 " I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it? "
19 " Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her "
20 " I think play must have been invented so we wouldn't go mad thinking about certain things. "
