“After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.”

“His face almost looked the way it did when he was a teenager, when there was the subtle expression of both confidence and mischief in his darkly handsome eyes. When I think of him now, though, I don’t picture his face the way it is. What I see is from a memory, from a moment when he must have been eleven or twelve years old and we were both in our backyard and it was summertime and I was drawing in a coloring book and he was there in the green grass and he didn’t know I was watching him. He was crawling around on all fours; he was practicing being a lion or a tiger or more probably a leopard and he was growling to himself, stalking the shadow of a bird, and he didn’t see me staring at him and I think my mother was there, looking at us from an upstairs window, watching us both and gently smiling, and what I remember most is that all of us were happy then with who we were at that moment; at that moment, all of us were quietly happy.”

“Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this.”

“I really do. It’s the first time I don’t have to think at work, you know. It’s really simple. Youjust answer the phone and put in people’s orders. It’s pretty laid back. You don’t like it?”“No. I feel like it’s killing my brain.”“Maybe that’s why I like it. I don’t mind not having to think.”

“-Are you ready to return to the outside world, Billy?-No, definitely not, sir.-Well, you can't stay here forever now, can you?-Why not? I'm not bothering anybody, sir.-Because it's not healthy. You're a very special young man, Billy. It's time you found that out on your own, out there. The world may not be as terrible as you think.-I would like to stay here one more month, if I may, sir.-One more month? Why?-Summer will be over, sir. I can't go out there if it's going to be summertime.-And why not?-I wouldn't want to see any young girls playing. I would not want to see any flowers outside.-Why?-Because everything happy right now is going to die.-But Billy...-I would not like to be reminded of anything pretty.-But Billy, of course, anything might...-I would not like to be reminded.-OK, OK. We will se what we can do, Billy.”

“We did something very simple," Effie says."Yes, and what was that?"Effie Mumford stares off the porch into the night sky. The first stars of the evening are quietly arriving, and Billy, following her gaze, listens as the small girl speaks."We allowed ourselves, for one brief moment, to believe in something we could not see.”

“Where do you go when you die? Ha ha. Go on, go on and tell her, Billy."Billy smiles. "You become a little voice in someone's ear telling them that things will be alright.”