“I’ve never seen an old person cry like this. The sadness from life is supposed to be folded inside an old person, not streaming out. - Iris from Crossing the Tracks”

“Under a bruised sky, fingers of wind stroke the wheat from bleached gold to tan and back.”

“Everything will need selling, or moving, or rearranging. But there's no right place for any of it, including the most awkward piece of furniture: me. I'm too empty to sell. I'm too replaceable to stay in Wellsford, and I'm too big for Celeste's apartment.”

“Top-heavy sunflowers droop, their leaves baked golden by the August sun.”

“Dust the people you love.”

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”

“A novel works it's magic by putting a reader inside another person's life. The pace is as slow as life. It's as detailed as life. It requires you, the reader, to fill in an outline of words with vivid pictures drawn subconsciously from your own life, so that the story feels more personal than the sets designed by someone else and handed over via TV or movies. Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up. It's why you might find yourself crying, even if you aren't the crying kind.”