“When I'd first brought it home from the thrift store, I'd planned to keep it in the closet I shared with Summer, But Jordis asked me to hang it in full view of the room because she liked the glitter.”

“I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.”

“I tried to go back and talk about what I did know. I told her about one girl he'd brought home from Cornell; I'd asked if she was his girlfriend, and he's said, "When you define something, you limit it.”

“I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band.”

“I suppose the Valley of the Na, in Always Coming Home, is where I think I'd most like to live; but that's partly because I did live there, all the summers of my childhood.”

“Not that I'd really been planning on keeping the attack secret; it had just been an option I'd wanted to keep open if I could.”