In which I think about quotes

Saturday morning, eons ago in the blog world, I finished Brian Morton's A Window Across the River. My crush rages on.

Below are three of my favorite quotes from AWATR. I have been thinking about quotes lately. About why I like them. What that says about me. Do I like the ease, the comfort of summing up a feeling or sentiment in a tidy sentence? Am I clutching to the ideal that a single thought can encapsulate us and become a mantra? Do I think quotes reveal some ray of truth that paragraphs can't capture? What's the hangup with finding gems of truth? I don't know, but I can't seem to be cynical about them. I like them. They make me want to fold down pages. They let you see into other people's lives or give you the feeling that someone else can see into your life, and they understand. If only for a moment. Comfort. Even in darkness.

Ugh. Did I just go there? Whatever, here are the quotes:

"You spend a lot of time worrying about what choice you're going to make, until one day you take a look at your life and realize you've already chosen."

"You tell someone you love him, because you think you do - or because you want to, and you hope that saying it will make it become true - and then, when you begin to see that you never have, never will, you can't quite take it back."

"We think of our lives as incredibly complicated and long, composed of many different stages, different eras, when the truth is that a life is but a single note."