“The past is a chatty companion, I can tell you.”

“Though you may be a wanderer, living out your days in exile, home is with you always, in blood-song and bone map, and in the echo of your mother’s voice as you tell her favorite tale to your children or the children who gather around you in the land of your exile. Home is your most constant companion.”

“He stood looking out past the certainty of the empty porch, but he couldn’t imagine his father standing anywhere else. It was like listening for the phone to ring, wanting it to ring so badly you convince yourself that you can feel the person on the other end of the line, feel them dialing your number, but then you wait and wait, and it never rings.”

“Worry can pull a person’s face into a mask of anxious lines, and he could tell she’d had some of that, but even worried folks could laugh.”

“You can never go back, really, there is only forward.”

“For when we read, don’t we summon the past into the present? Hold out our hand and invite an author to sit with us for a time?”

“Why? I mean, how could you know? I don’t understand.” “Nothing to understand. There is no great mystery in friendship. You brought yourself here, just as I brought myself here to wait for you. I don’t even mind that you’ve kept me waiting.”