Modern Love

“I tossed out one last question: ‘Have you ever been in love?’ No one, he said, had ever asked him that in an interview. ‘Yes,’ he finally answered. ‘But I didn’t realize it until it was too late.’ Then he asked me to turn off my recorder. I hit Stop."

“We rallied, not with the adrenaline-pumping determination to win at all costs, but with the patience and control that came with not wanting it to be over: not the summer, not our son’s childhood, not this game, ever.”

“He was very handsome. He wore gray turtleneck sweaters and smelled like mint aftershave and old books. He was 55 and recently divorced for the second time. He was my father. He wasnt really my father.”

“Old love is different. In our 70s and 80s, we had been through enough of life’s ups and downs to know who we were, and we had learned to compromise. The finish line was drawing closer.”

"Im a vampire, basically — going to bed around 8 or 9 a.m. and waking around 4 or 5 p.m. First dates usually go OK because they’re in the evening, but complications quickly arise."

"He was everything a 10-year-old girl could ever hope for in a man. It was decided; I was in love. I started to wonder if the glow from my wedding dress would make him look washed-out. I began devising a plan in which he and I would end up 2gether 4ever, as all my notebooks stated."

"A few months later, I was in the psychologist’s reception room, paying for my fourth really good cry, when a woman carrying a child walked in. I didn’t recognize her at first, and then I remembered her face. Are you the wife of the guy my wife is having an affair with? I asked tactlessly. Yeah, she said. But we’re not together anymore."

"On this night, long after we had thrown in the towel on us, here we were again, crawling back into the ring. This time, though, it would be different. We just never imagined how different it would become, or how quickly."