“Like my father, Donor White could hold in his head the incompatible demands of rationality and irrationality, of facts and love.”

“In the early 1980s, Graham worked hard to turn the Repository into a respectable business, rather than a ludicrous one: Graham's wife didn't like keeping the sperm at the Escondido estate. Not only had the house been picketed, but a Japanese trespasser had once made a run at the sperm, only to be nipped by a family dog.”

“If she were running through the rye, if she were headed towards the abyss, I would grab hold with every ounce of my strength, with every scared beat of my heart, with every thought that could only be for her. And if I were to be running the same way, I’d like to think she’d do the same. But maybe her hands would be busy holding the book. Maybe she wouldn’t see me, too intent on looking for Phoebe from the carousel. Or waiting for Holden to hold her, to wrap her in the pages of his arms, to say she was the only one who truly knew him, as I plunged past her, sad to be leaving, and a little happy to be away.”

“...I know that in your heart you miss all those wonderful moments you spent with my father --watching him gnaw on the furniture, listening to his insane gibbering, and enjoying all those playful blows to the stomach and kicks to the head with which he demonstrated his affection for his wives.--King Urgit”

“I suppose my greatest disappointment has been realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery. --- Ann Eliza Young, page 253”

“Lou looked at Davis there praying like God was in his heart and home, while his family remained behind in rags and fear and would have starved except for the kindness of Louisa Cardinal. She could only shake her head.”

“There are hundreds of reasons for Daniel and meto be impossible. History has not been kindto two boys who love each other like we do.But putting that aside. And not even consideringthe fact that a hundred and fifty years ago,his family was in a small town in Russiaand my family was in a similarly small townin Ireland- I can't imagine they could haveimagined us here, together. Forgetting our gender,ignoring all the strange roads that led to usbeing in the same time and place, there is stillthe simple impossibility of love. That all of ourcontradicting securities and insecurities,interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts,could somehow translate into this commonuncommon affection should be as impossible as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him.”