“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.”

“One time I was standing on a corner in Chicago & a man stopped his car & asked for directions to a place I knew & I said that's too easy, ask me something harder & he yelled & said he wasn't playing games kid & then he drove off & I think about him sometimes & wonder if he ever got there.”

“I buried a nickel under the porch when I was 8, she said, but one day my grandma died & they sold the house & I never got to go back for it.A nickel used to mean something, I said.She nodded. It still does, she said & then she started to cry.”

“I have too much to lose, she said, if I cross that line. Like what? I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line & I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.”

“This used to be a mean monster until he got sick one winter with the flu & stayed in bed & watched too much Little House on the Prairie & now the littlest thing & he starts to cry.”

“Permanence:Just because they die, she said, doesn't mean they go away.”

“There are your fog people & your sun people, he said. I said I wasn't sure which kind I was. He nodded. Fog'll do that to you, he said.”