“Being there was like having a good cry, the clearing of the air after weight has been held.”

“I loved my brother, but relying on him was like closing a hand around air.”

“…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.”

“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”

“That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.”

“While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.”

“Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.”