“What we eat is a poem.”

“Just when we think we have a system, ...the system collapses. Just when we know our way around, we get lost. Just when we think we know what's coming next, everything changes.”

“You lose sleep, you lose your appetite, but eventually you fall asleep and eventually you eat - you may hate yourself for it, but the body's demands are incontrovertible. He had always felt guilty about that, that he went on living, eating tomato sandwiches, going to Iditarod Days with his father, making snowballs, when his mother could not.”

“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.”

“Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”

“The dead are gone and so their power over the living is only temporary. You lose sleep, you lose appetite, but eventually you fall asleep and eventually you eat - you may hate yourself for it, but the body's demands are incontrovertible. He had always felt guilt about that, that he went on living... p 115”

“He wondered if such things were born into people. If perhaps we cannot alter who we are - if the place we come from dictates the place we will end up.”