“Over time his images of the baby, like photographs handled too often, had worn down and creased, lost their definition. ”

“Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor--it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.”

“had felt time settle over itself, imbricate and fix into place the vertigo of future aligning with the present.”

“To be in love was to be dazed twenty times a morning: by the latticework of frost on his windshield; by a feather loosed from his pillow; by a soft, pink rim of light over the hills.”

“He could not look at his daughter without feeling his heart turn over.”

“Twenty thousand days and nights in one place, each layered and trapped and folded on top of the last, the creases in her hands, the aches between her vertebrae. Embryo, seed coat, endosperm: What is a seed if not the purest kind of memory, a link to every generation that has gone before it?”

“Every small, concurrent event had slowed down and assumed an excruciating clarity.”