“I have a good eye," said Benjamin. "Most of the time I can look at a person and see their whole life. Small things give them away. That farmer, for instance. I could tell by the way he tied his shoes that he'd never traveled more than twenty miles from his home, and it was unlikely that he'd follow us for long. And that Father John of yours. I knew he had something hidden in that sleeve. And I knew he'd use it on you. The only thing I didn't know was if you deserved it.”

“When death comes, she said, all that matters is this: to be next to one another. My mother was wearing a silk dress, and as she pressed her fingers into his, all of my father's adventures and hard living melted away. He knew that he had met the woman he would love until he couldn't love anymore.”

“The Harelip had taken off her heavy shawl and draped it over a headstone. The grave was tilted and covered with moss, the name worn away by the weather. The person underneath had been forgotten and was no longer mourned by the world. But for a moment, Ren thought, the small black slate looked warmed, and grateful for being chosen.”

“Is that what you wanted to hear?""No."The man reached over, took hold of the lantern and blew it out. Night enveloped the barn. "Well," he said at last to the darkness between them, "that's when you know it's the truth.”

“So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back.""How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore."Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course.""What?""I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice."Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box."Uh uh.""You're supposed to drink juice.""I just drank some.""More, though."I shook my head."Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys.”

“It's the best kind of devastating there is. He took his pain and he turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that's what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you. What I'm trying to say is, it's just nice, I guess, knowing that someone else can put into words what I feel. That there are people who have been through things worse than I have, and they came out on the other side okay. Not only that, but they have made some kind of twisted, effed up sense of the completely senseless. They made it mean something. These songs tell me I'm not alone. If you look at it that way, music...music can see you through anything.”

“For years he'd strived to make a difference in the world, and he'd worked like a dog to make that happen, and yet here he was, a man sitting on a dock with his children, and never had he felt more certain that his words mattered.”