“He was forever dwelling on his failures. He held them up to the light and examined them in minute detail, like necklaces that had tangled in a drawer.”

“Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might bedone in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds ofhours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt theprecious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.”

“Ryan held a strawberry milkshake in one hand, his father's ashes in the other--and hoped like hell he didn't get them mixed up.”

“Cole reached into his pocket and handed Beckett the bag with the rings. He held them gently in a cupped hand for a moment and smiled down at them. Then he put them in his pocket and held his head high.”

“At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible; because they were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to be,--inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away.”

“He'd stepped on something. He took a step back and knelt and parted the grass with his hands. It was an apple. He picked it up and held it to the light. Hard and brown and shriveled. He wiped it with the cloth and bit into it. Dry and almost tasteless. But an apple. He ate it entire, seeds and all. He held the stem between his thumb and forefinger and let it drop. Then he went treading softly through the grass. His feet still wrapped in the remnants of the coat and the shreds of tarp and he sat and untied them and stuffed the wrappings in his pocket and went down the rows barefoot. By the time he got to the bottom of the orchard he had four more apples and he put them in his pocket and came back.”