“The first time Dad tried Rollerblades he had a bad wipeout on the sidewalk in front of our house- his feet went flying out from under him and he bruised his tailbone. "If God had ment us to have wheels on our feet he would have put them there," he said a few minutes later, searching the linen closet for the heating pad. And whenever Derek and I sometimes Mom went ice-skating at the rink in Ashton City, Dad would watch from the benches on the sidelines. "If God had meant for us to have blades on our feet...”

“Pegasus's dad was poseidon, the god of the sea, and his mom was Medusa, and evil Gorgon who had fangs and lizard skin and living snakes for hair. And you thought your family was weird.”

“And time tears us up and then it tries to fix us.”

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior. ”

“He can hum the music in his old man's quivering voice, but he prefers it in his head, where it lives on in violins and reedy winds. If he imagines it in rehearsal he can remember every step of his three-minute solo as if he had danced it only yesterday, but he knows, too, that one time, onstage in Berlin, he had not danced it as he had learned it; this much he knows but cannot recreate, could no recreate it even a moment after he had finished dancing it. While dancing he had felt blind to the stage and audience, deaf to the music. He had let his body do what it needed to do, free to expand and contract in space, to soar and spin. So, accordingly, when he tries to remember the way he danced it on stage, he cannot hear the music or feel his feet or get a sense of the audience. He is embryonic, momentarily cut off from the world around him. The three most important minutes of his life, the ones that determined his fate and future, are the three to which he cannot gain access, ever.”

“Sometimes it's like I'm living my life waiting for more bad news.”

“The past is every second of your life up until now. Up until NOW. See how quickly the present is gobbled up by the past? The present is... Sorry, it's already gone. Hmm, it was just there a minute ago.”