“Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends.”

“You know . . . a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace.”

“For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay...”

“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”

“Driving east, I'm not sure what we're running from. Evie or the police of Mr. Baxter or the Rhea sisters. Or nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up, getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if by running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

“A daughter of a King of Ireland, heardA voice singing on a May Eve like this,And followed half awake and half asleep,Until she came into the Land of Faery,Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.And she is still there, busied with a danceDeep in the dewy shadow of a wood,Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.”