“Reality is, there is almost always something going wrong. Hard times are normal.”

“When something happens, something else always happens.”

“Sometimes we try to hard to be something we are not, perhaps being ourselves is harder than we think.”

“I always had plenty of ideas. I didn’t exactly have them. They grew—little by little, a half an idea at a time. First, part of a phrase and then a person to go with it. After a person, then a little corner of a place for the person to be in.”

“Dreaming her way backward in time, resurrecting images, the young girl realized, with wonder, that the absent are always present, that you don't make them go away simply because you get on a train and head off in a particular direction.”

“He swam against the hard current of the class bores - there were three - who could relate every incident in the book to something in their own lives.”

“Together we climbed on the Peace City bus and road back towards my house. My almost normal feeling was gone. I was miles from ordinary now. Miles.”