“Did you skip your medication or something?”

“Rilla's heart skipped a beat - or, if that be a pysiological impossibility, she thought it did.”

“I realized about a month ago that there's a last time everyone skips across a street. And that most people I know have already skipped for the last time and don't know it.From here on out it will always be walking or running, growing older and buying things at the store or seeing friends or going to work, but never again will life impel them to skip. When I thought of this, the tragedy of it overwhelmed me so that I skipped all the way home from my friend's house.Skipping is a strange thing. Because it means something. Like trains make the sound of leaving. Skipping is the motion of being totally free, childlike, abandoned of self and to self.But I learned something else about skipping. You can't fake it. Or make it happen. It must be something that happens to you. (pp. 152-153)”

“The child molester skipped breakfast, but said he'd grab a little something on the way to work.”

“What did you do?”“What makes you think I did something?”Chris snorted. “You’re the guy. Of course it’s your fault. Even when it’s not your fault, it’s your fault.”

“You only really discover a masterpiece after a third or fourth reading, don’t you agree?”“And how can you tell something is a masterpiece?”“I don’t skip over the same passages”.”