“Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.”

“He glances down and notices that I'm still wearing a certain blue something, and, this time, it's HIS index finger that wraps underneath MY rubber band. I shiver wonderfully. "I'm never taking it off." Cricket brushes the delicate skin of my wrist. "It'll fall off." "I'll ask you for another one." "I'll give you another one." He smiles and touches his nose to mine.”

“They were big and black and rubber—the kind of boots you might be wearing as you came in the kitchen door, shaking off your rain slicker and saying, Grab the young’uns, Ma. Crick’s a-rising.”

“What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”

“Those bands, you plan your life around them. You plan vacations around concert dates. You save babysitting money for records. You live for those days when Creem magazine arrives in your dusty mailbox and you frantically flip through it for any information on your favorites. The bands, the musicians that you love, they love you back. And when they quit, when they fall apart, when they die—they ruin that future you thought they’d always be a part of.”

“Most people want to be circled by safety, not by the unexpected. The unexpected can take you out. But the unexpected can also take you over and change your life. Put a heart in your body where a stone used to be.”