"It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can."
- Jane Hamilton
"I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose ..."
"She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page."
"...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And th..."
"Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped."
"Wait." Walter went to the basket, taking what was a gray sleeve, drawing it out fro the middle of the heap. "Oh," He said. He held the shapeless wool sweater to his chest. Joyce had knit for months th..."
"...the other's self, that enormous hulking thing each possessed, that a self of course is not inconsequential. p124"
"I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to sho..."
"He wondered if somewhere far off, defying the laws of science, Mitch's two screams were still echoing, if those vibrations had traveled into space, if they moved on and on like rays in a light-year. T..."
"I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two."