“Southern California had no quarterly miracles, no opportunities for starting over. Not everybody cares to pay the cold, silver coinage of winter for a seasonal renascence, but for me it was a small price.”

“For everything there is a season. I'd miss having the seasons, people from New York like to say by way of indicating the extraordinary pride they take in not living in Southern California. In fact Southern California does have seasons (it has for example "fire season" or "the season when the fire comes," and it also has the season when the rains comes, but such Southern California seasons, arriving as they do so theatrically as to seem strokes of random fate, do not inexorably suggest the passage of time. Those other seasons, the ones so prized on the East Coast, do. Seasons in Southern California suggest violence, but not necessarily death.Seasons in New York-the relentless dropping of the leaves, the steady darkening of the days, the blue nights themselves-suggest only death.”

“I scooted over, patting the bed next to me. "No such luck. And now you get to watch forty straight hours of Easton Heights with me!" He turned on the first disk, shaking his head, then got onto the bed next to me. "Small price to pay for getting to hold your hand." I wasn't cold anymore.”

“It's nine thirty as night, and it's still eighty-seven degrees outside. Besides, this is Southern California. When God makes it snow here, it's not a plan; it's a miracle.”

“I stopped paying the price for success and started enjoying the price for success.”

“I still had an irrational desire to do an interpretive dance about rainbows, but it was a small price to pay for being healed.”