“I'm the kind of Flying Wallenda who prays for a good net. That's all. Just a good net.”

“In America when someone asks me my nationality, I can't just say American. I have to go back generations, elaborate on there in Europe my ancestors were from. But here, I can just say it, Je suis Americaine. It feels good.”

“To him food was identity, culture, family, how you define home and love and who you are - all of it at once....It's not just the pie. It's the chemistry and physics. It's place and time and history and religion and music...I felt blurred by his presence, overwhelmed with double vision - the world as I was seeing it and the world as Henry would have.”

“This mountain, the arched back of the earth risen before us, it made me feel humble, like a beggar, just lucky to be here at all, even briefly.”

“We were new then, our lives stretched out before us. Our families had let us go. Abbott had yet to find us. For this very short time, it would be just the two of us - just two kids.”

“Love is infinite. Grief can lead to love. Love can lead to grief. Grief is a love story told backward just as love is a grief story told backward.”

“I missed my mother and Elysius. It wasn't that I wanted them with me at that very moment. I wanted them in the past. I wanted to have back just one sunny afternoon together.”