“If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor. We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the story seldom did. Certainly not the action.”

“You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish.”

“It happened so long ago I can't even be sure it happened as I say it did. Stories change in the telling, memory makes up as much as it knows. We were very small. The things we saw were all mixed up with the things we dreamed and the things we were scared of.”

“Don't get me wrong. The good part of Mom's life was shrinking down to nothing, and the hard parts were about all that remained. So I didn't long for a cure, nor did I expect one. Those who live long die in the end. But Addie was my compass north; as long as she was around, I knew where I was, even if I was running in the opposite direction. How would I get my bearings without her?”

“They really cut to the chase in the urologist’s examination room, and I tried to laugh. If this office were a movie, it would have been rated R.”

“You know, Dean said, gesturing with his uninjured hand. If we were in an action movie, this would be the scene where you tenderly dress my wounds. then the wailing guitar ballad would kick in and we'd end up rolling around on the bed in a slow motion montage.If I were in Q, The Winged Serpent, Xochi replied, this would be the scene where I sacrifice you to Quetzalcoatl.”