“...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.”

“It was not a triumphal return. Home, as I had known it, was gone.”

“I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.”

“The view from my window was of a sloping green field, dotted with a few muddy sheep; the same lush, safe, soggy world that nearly fifteen years earlier was all Lulu, Damien, and I had ever known. Until Dad had said, "We're going to Botswana."I felt profoundly homesick, for the first time in my life. Knowing I'd be back, I'd never minded leaving before. There was the comforting thought of returning.”

“...because I'm sure that as soon as things really get back to "normal," once our kids or grandkids grow up in a peaceful and comfortable world, they'll probably go right back to being as selfish and narrow-minded and generally shitty to one another as we were.”

“In my dream, I am not returning to Detroit to be with my parents. I'm not dreaming of being back in Mexico with my mom. I certainly don't dream to be back with Angelita! No, in my favorite dream, I go home... home to Nancy's house.”