“It was wrong and impossible and illicit and yet each minute with the boy was a gift, a scene from a story he could not leave.”

“And this feeling, permeating every waking minute, that he had made too many wrong decisions.”

“the air would get so heavy with moisture he imagined he could feel each bloated molecule as it toppled into his lungs.”

“He could see tiny particles of dust drifting in the air between her ankles, each fleck tumbling individually in and out of the sunlight, and there was something intensely familiar in their arrangement.”

“Does it matter? In memory, in story, in the end, we can remake our lives any way we need. To be surprised, truly and utterly surprised by what came into your life - this, Winkler was learning, was the true gift.”

“But have heart. Hope is something that can be very dangerous but without it life would be horribly dry. Impossible, even. Take it from me.”

“Maybe he was dead and this island was purgatory from which he could only watch the souls of the more deserving go shuttling past to their various Edens. What is death, after all, but a cessation of involvement with the world, a departure from those you love, and those who love you?”