S.J. Watson quotes:

It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.

I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.

I want to sleep. To find a safe place somewhere, and close my eyes, and rest, like an animal. That is what I am. An animal. Living from moment to moment, day to day, trying to make sense of the world in which I find myself.

And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.

Do you trust me? The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.

There are memories I a better off without. Things better lost forever.

There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.

Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.

Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better.

I will never abandon you. I love you too much.

I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.

With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.

To create myself from nothing.

I am floating, I thought, completely without anchor, at the mercy of the wind.

"I feel like he's taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he's doing. And so I don't trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.

I am an adult, but a damaged one.

I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of collection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.

I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.

I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.

We're constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.

What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.