“He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.”

“There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.”

“She was shining a light on us, she was coming into being, endlessly being formed and reformed as the muscles in her face worked at smiling and speaking, as the electronic dots swarmed.”

“Is there a fungus that speaks to you? I'm serious. People hear things. They hear God."He meant it. He was serious. He wanted to mean it, to hear anything the man might say, the wholeshapeless narrative of his unraveling.”

“He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.”

“[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology.”

“When Lee has a certain look on his face, eyes kind of amused, mouth small and tight, he finds himself thinking of his father. He believes it is a look his father may have used. It feels like his father. A curious sensation, the look coming upon him, taking hold in an unmistakable way, and then his old man is here, eerie and forceful and whole, a meeting across worlds.”