“Nobody likes for the hero to walk away.”

“Americans look for heroes in the strangest of places.”

“She knew for certain there were all kinds of people who craved their youth, who would run like gazelles toward that fishhook of time, peeling off the years like old imagined skins.”

“Only Gracie knew what it was like to wake up at night and feel how cold sheets can get on the empty side of a bed.”

“It wasn't that Mattie didn't believe in God. She did, she most surely did. She just didn't like some of the things He did, is all.”

“Sometimes, in the dark of night, when no one else could hear him but me, he'd cry out, like he was fighting some silent little war in his head.”

“The years of her life tumbled out onto the floor like marbles that she would never be able to gather up again in one bowl. The years of her life had been a made puzzle that one day gets unmade, the pieces all scattered.”