“the dreams had ceased coming, as they often did, retreating somewhere else for years, until another event of sufficient significance neared, and the patterns of circumstance dragged them to the surface again.”

“Our shadows are our histories. We drag them everywhere.”

“The year swung past the fulcrum of another equinox.”

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

“The straining of dreams against the fabric of reality. Growing up meant burying possibilities, one after another.”

“Memory gallops, then checks up and veers unexpectedly; to memory, the order of occurrence is arbitrary. Winkler was still on an airplane, hurtling north, but he was also pushing farther back, sinking deeper into the overlaps, to the years before he even had a daughter, before he had even dreamed of the woman who would become his wife.”

“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.”