“No, nothing much had changed in the old neighborhood. She was still just an actress in someone else’s play.”

“She wished with one part of her soul this weren’t real and with the other that it was, but wasn’t it just another goodbye either way?”

“Every conversation they had anymore it felt like instead of unraveling the mystery, it just further entangled all of them into a twisted never-ending knot.”

“It was a sickening, humbling, maddeningly powerless sensation this watching them and waiting for them to come to him. For the time they could be a family again. But Mickey did it like one’s tongue pointlessly finds a mouth sore over and over again, half to see if it was still there, half to see if it still hurt.”

“...for there is nothing so perfect as a thing with no ending and no beginning, such as a family of souls intertwined.”

“This was like discovering your vanilla cupcake had a chocolate fudge center.”

“She smelled like vanilla spice, or pumpkin pie, or something sweet yet sinful.”