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

“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.”

“Dust the people you love.”

“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”

“For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.”

“Sympathizing over the behavior of men is the baking soda of women's friendships, it seems,the thing that makes them bubble and rise.”