“They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.”

“It's a good thing you and your pills weren't around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You'd have drugged "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "The Taking of Christ" right the hell out of them.”

“I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.”

“Bravery is feeling fear but doing the thing anyway.”

“The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.”

“You are a ghost, Andi," she says. "Almost gone."I look at her. I want to say something but I can't get the words out.She squeezes my hands. "Come back to us," she says. And she's gone.”

“Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.”