“quoting reminds me there are other people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts besides mine, and other ways of thinking.”

“They did the best they could. Besides I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this." She twined her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.”

“The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.”

“To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows”

“But I must pay attention now, she thinks, because what other choice is there? Maybe when I die my soul will fly to meet God, but when that time comes I won't have the use of clever hands, nor the burden of an ugly face; hands and face will be planted like bulbs in the soil, while only the bloom of the spirit emerges elsewhere. So let my hands and my face make their way in the world, let my hungry eyes see, my tongue taste.”

“... the decades looked on and didn't notice her passing. They stared from their fixed mounts across at each other and didn't see revolution striding between them, on her way to destiny.”

“He had no other plans for the rest of his life. He followed her.”