“Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.”

“I looked at my two wolves. When I knelt they came to me rubbed against me smelling me and I stroked them. "Thank you for believing in me " I said and maybe they understood and maybe they didn't.”

“It was like she understood something about me that she'd never quite understood before. I always felt that when she looked at me, she was trying to find me, trying to find out who I was. But it seemed at that moment that she saw me, that she knew me. But that confused me.”

“I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it.”

“I could only stare, any sense that maybe I understood him evaporating as it always did. I'd glimpse something underneath, and he'd snatched it away so fast it left bruises that called me a fool for hoping for more.”

“Maybe they notice me wincing whenever I hear them say it, but I don't know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wince-a-thon.”