“The dread that had been rising all morning rose higher in his throat as if by capillary action.”

“March, rain at the windows, and he had to be up at five the next morning. He listened to the click and patter of drops against the panes.”

“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.”

“A torrent of language, a spring off the near-infinite stream of confessions he had harbored half his life, all of hers.”

“Between them was fifteen or so feet of frozen space, bounded by his window and hers, but it was as if the windows had liquefied, or else the air had, and his vision skewed and rippled and it was all he could do to put the Newport into gear and ease forward to let the next car in.”

“He checked the barometer he'd nailed to the family room wall: the pressure was rising.”

“For Winkler each hour was another hour between Cleveland and Anchorage, between who they were becoming and who they had been.”