“Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives. Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend”

“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”

“It was not necessarily what Ketchum might have said about the war in Iraq, or the never-ending mess in the Middle East, that particularly interested Danny or Six-Pack Pam. It was what Ketchum would have said about anything. It was the old logger's voice that Danny and Six-Pack wanted to hear. Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them”

“I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.”

“But the available light in Twisted River was dim and growing dimmer. The dance-hall door blew (or was slammed) closed, cutting off Teresa Brewer as suddenly as if Six-Pack had taken the singer’s slender throat in her hands. When the dance-hall door blew (or was kicked) open again, Tony Bennett was crooning “Rags to Riches.” Dominic didn’t for a moment doubt that the town’s eternal violence was partly spawned by irredeemable music.”

“When he and Wally stopped laughing, Homer said, ‘I’ve never seen the ocean, you know.’‘Candy, did you hear that?’ Wally asked, but Candy had released herself with her brief laughter and she was sound asleep. ‘You’ve never seen the ocean?’ Wally asked Homer.‘That’s right,’ said Homer Wells.‘That’s not funny,’ said Wally seriously.‘Right,’ Homer said.A little later, Wally said, ‘You want to drive for a while?’‘I don’t know how to drive,’ Homer said.‘Really?’ Wally asked. And later still – it was almost midnight – Wally asked, ‘Uh, have you ever been with a girl – made love to one, you know?’ But Homer Wells had also felt released: he had laughed out loud with his new friends. The young but veteran insomniac had fallen asleep. Would Wally have been surprised to know that Homer hadn’t laughed out loud with friends before, either?”

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”