“She still had all of her marbles, though every one of them was a bit odd and rolled asymmetrically.”

“She thought for a minute about going back, but decided that maybe being wet on a sort-of adventure was better than being dry and bored for sure.”

“At least once a week, Dinsy was amused by the indignant sputtering of someone who had just spooned dill weed, not sugar, into a cup of Earl Grey tea.”

“Music is the hidden arithmetic of the soul, which does not know that it deals with numbers. (Paraphrasing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz)”

“How odd, to suddenly glimpse a facet of me I didn't know existed. I guess it really isn't all that unusual to surprise oneself with an ugly bit of ego.”

“In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses.At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home.And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness.”

“Her life, she knew, was becoming simplified into an unbreakable chain of habits, a series of orderly actions at regular hours. Vaguely, she thought of herself as a happy woman; yet she was aware that this monotony of contentment had no relation to what she had called happiness in her youth. It was better perhaps; it was certainly as good; but it measured all the difference between youth and maturity.”