Great lines from In the Woods

Just finished this. Loved it. Maybe it's too unhappy and not all neatly resolved enough for American audiences. And sometimes I hated the narrator. But that was the point.

Two snippets from near the end. This is Ryan's recollection of the only moment he remembers post Operation Vestal about the summer Peter and Jamie disappeared, the day that Jamie learned-erroneously-that her mother would not be sending her to boarding school in the fall:

Jamie screamed, "I'm gonna stay here forever!" and danced on the wall like a thing made of air, "Forever and ever and ever!" And I just yelled, wild wordless whoops, and the wood caught our voices and tossed them outwards in great expanding ripples, wove them into the whirlpool of leaves and the jink and bubble of the river and the rustling calling web of rabbits and beetles and robins and all the other denizens of our domain, into one long high paean.

This memory, alone of all my hoard, did not dissolve into smoke and slide away through my fingers. It remained-still remains-sharp-edged and warm and mine, a single bright coin left in my hand. I suppose that, if the wood was going to leave me only one moment, that was a kind one to choose.

And this so very melancholy scene where Ryan calls Cassie, who hasn't spoken to him in months, in the middle of the night after he hears she is engaged to Sam:

On the third ring, she said blurrily, "Maddox."

"Cassie," I said. "Cassie, you're not actually going to marry that boring little yokel. Are you?"

I heard her catch her breath, ready to say something. After a while she let it out again.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm so so sorry. I love you, Cass. Please."

I waited again. After a long time, I heard a clunk. Then Sam, somewhere in the background, said, "Who was that?"

"Wrong number," Cassie said, farther away now. "Some drunk guy."

....

More low laughter, a rustle, a kiss; a long contented sigh. Then nothing but their breathing, easing back into tandem and gradually into sleep.

I sat there for a very long time, watching the sky lighten outside my window and realizing that my name hadn't come up on Cassie's mobile....I never knew, not then, not now, whether Cassie thought she had hung up, or whether she wanted to hurt me, or whether she wanted to give me one last gift, one last night listening to her breathe.