“Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn’t know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way”

“They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they though civilisation could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn't know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday and stretching out our hands in the same, same way.”

“Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.”

“When our dreams don’t come true, sometimes we can hand them down to our children and hope that they will come true for them. The joy can be immeasurable just the same.”

“He stretched out his hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad…The poem had done no ‘good’ to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.”

“In all his years as a cop he had never felt this helpless, as though he had one hand tied behind his back. He had always been able to sort everything out. People came to him the same way they went to Father Andrew.Now he was watching this family, his family, die a little every day and there was nothing he could do to save them.The worst thoughts of all came in the middle of the night. He would wake from a sound sleep with his heart racing and just knew that wherever Lockie was he was suffering. He was suffering and he was probably just waiting for Pete to come and save him the way the teacher told all the kids every year.”