“I got all my limbs," Mosca answered quickly. "I been knocked and scraped and chased about but my heart’s still beating inside my hide.”

“I got 27 people livin in my head and all of them was about to beat the heck out of you for doin that..”

“You were all I wanted, the best gift. I hadn’t even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart’s desire.”

“In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.”

“I got wiring loose inside my headI got books that I never ever readI got secrets in my garden shedI got a scar where all my urges bledI got people underneath my bedI got a place where all my dreams are deadSwim with me into your blackest eyes”

“Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that.”