“It's hard to see clearly when your eyes are squinched tight out of fear.”

“...What is more like love than the ocean? You can play in it, drown in it...it can be clear and bright enough to hurt your eyes, or covered in fog, hidden behind a curve of roads and then suddenly there in full glory. It's waves come like breaths, in and out, body stretched to forever in it's possibilities, and yet it's heart lies deep, not fully knowable, inconceivably majestic.”

“I grow green beans in my garden. The one thing I know about harvesting them is that you need to train your eyes to see the beans. At first it all looks like leaves, until you see one bean and then another and another. If you want clarity, too, you have to look hard. You have to look under things and look from different angles. You'll see what you need to when you do that. A hundred beans, suddenly.”

“I've come to the conclusion that it's all about fear- fear that your kid won't come out on top, be a success. Forcing him into these brutal encounters will a) make a dame sure he is a success, and b) all you to see evidence of that success with the added bonus of a cheering crowd. This means that sports are supported with an almost desperate enthusiasm. The football team gets catered dinners before a fame. Honor Society is lucky if it gets a cupcake. Academic success-forget it. That requires too much imagination. There's no scoreboard.”

“Love." She looked at me with those blue eyes. "Isn't it astonishing how confused and complicated such a small,simple word is? It attracts so many other things, doesn't it, that stick to it like barnacles on rock...fear, guilt. Need. You can't even see the rock anymore. I imagine love in its purest form is a rare thing.”

“It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.”

“What happened?" I ask. My heart hurts."That big guy," he says. His voice is high and tight. "Number forty-six. Jeez, he just bashed his shoulder right into my chest, and when I was on the ground, he steps on my leg with his cleat." He sniffs hard, rubs his nose on his sleeve, doesn't meet my eyes."That bastard," I say. "The minute he gets off the field I'm going to kick him in the balls." Oliver laughs a little, his eyes filling up at the same time. "He'll never know what hit him. His balls are gonna go flying, I promise you that. People will wish they brought their catcher's mitts.”