“He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.”

“The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.”

“There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.”

“She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.”

“But together they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a brave whole.”

“It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.”

“Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth.”