“She had stood there with the phone pressed to her ear as though it were a huge plastic seashell, all the unhappy years of her marriage echoing again in her eardrums, washing up in the coils of her memory.”

“Mattie felt drained, as though someone had stood her on her head and poured her entire heart and soul right out of her body.”

“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.”

“Everything seemed to be a clue to the hereafter, now that one of her own had gone there.”

“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.”

“The big television crouched in the shadowy beam of the porch light. Mattie could see its black, open face, and she felt as though she were looking into the mouth of a deep, dangerous cave.”

“looking off at the past as though it were a place one might still get to”