“Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens -- but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.”

“Ready how? Who's ever ready for anything important?”

“You have not truly met someone until you have looked him or her in the eye as a soul with a place in your future.”

“When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.”

“Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.”

“People take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that.”

“There you are, diligently swimming a straight line, minding the form of your strokes, when you look up and see, always a shock, the currents you can't even feel have pulled you off course.”