“laura had hoped, she'd written in her journal, that whatever befell her daughters, they would not be damaged at the level of instinct, that exact phrase. ”

“She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet.”

“He did know: he knew her right away, and he felt known by her, and that was where the trouble really began...She could have been exotic or worldly or a Valkyrie and it would have meant nothing to him. But that Alice saw him―that was a feeling Amos had never experienced before, and it felt like a revelation and also like a virus.”

“I couldn't for the life of me figure out how long a person had to live, or how good she had to be, to get her hands on some treasure.”

“Ordinarily my mom just sunk deeper into her corner of the couch and ignored it. She had succesfully ignored a quarter of a century of entropy and decay, had sat peacefully crunching popcorn and drinking soda while the house fell down around us. If I had to guess the number of books she read during that time, I would place the number at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand.”

“My mom insisted on saying such things, even though almost no one understood what she meant. My Dad sometimes called her Addlebrain because she read so many books.”

“He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorablyfor the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters whoshone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scytheand his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is thehardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents,his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles,packed up his truck, and drove away.”