Garth Risk Hallberg said this quote

I couldn't understand; cheating was the one thing I'd told her all those years ago would be unforgivable. She knew, she said, but that was part of what had been confusing her, that I would even have told her that, as if she weren't an actual human being with the freedom to act, but some character in a scenario in my head. There was a quality I had of making the people closest to me feel lonely, somehow. Some essential cold withholding at the core of myself.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

One day, he and William had been speeding toward each other; the next, careening away. But why?

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

As if it were possible for one person to care about another and still treat him or her like this.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

But what if time worked the other way around?What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future?

~ Garth Risk Hallberg