“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.”

“Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her pack. She didn't like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere.”

“I sort of wish that was what happened though, Ginny, because that would mean the girl is all right. Fourteen-year-old girls have run off before."Ginny eyed the sheriff severely. "Not fourteen-year-old girls who had grandmas like Evelyn Larkin.”

“I realise people exist who don't read. But it's like I knew there were people who didn't breathe or eat: I can't imagine a life like that.”

“You had to wonder who all these people in their cars were leaving behind and who they were driving toward, and if they knew that in the distance, the echo of their tires on the asphalt sounded like a river, and that to someone like me, it could seem like the miracle I'd been looking for.”

“I watched my beautiful sister running . . . and I knew she was not running away from me or toward me. Like someone who has survived a gut-shot, the wound had been closing, closing - braiding into a scar for eight long years.”