“Hope, Patrick knew, was the exact measure of distancebetween himself and the person who’d come for help.”

“Love was supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it fellapart at the details. It couldn’t save a single child-not the ones who’d gone to Sterling High that day,expecting the normal; not Josie Cormier; certainly not Peter. So what was the recipe? Was it love,mixed with something else for good measure? Luck? Hope? Forgiveness?”

“And when your wife is not the same person you fell in love with eight years ago, where exactly does that leave you? Do you try to get to know who she has become, and hope for the best? Or do you keep deceiving yourself in the hope that she might wake up one morning and have gone back to the woman she used to be? May be, Caleb thinks with a small shock, he isn't the same person he once was, either.”

“When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.”

“They’re a-”“-band,” Patrick finished. “I know.”“They’re not just a band,” Orestes said with reverence, his fingers flying over the keyboard.“They’re the modern voice of the collective human conscience.”“Tell that to Tipper Gore.”“Who?”Patrick laughed. “She was before your time, I guess.”“What did you used to listen to when you were a kid?”“The cavemen, banging rocks together,” Patrick said dryly”

“How far can a person go... and still live with himself.”

“Traveling is all very well and good as long as you knew there is a place or person you can call home”