“Arthur laughs at his son’s embarrassment, though he also knows that this is exactly the kind of thing he likes about her. What does anyone like? Freckles, the curve of hair where she tucks it behind an ear, the sound of her voice when she tells a joke, her great, gleaming trombone in its velvet case. O’Neil has had girlfriends before, but this, Arthur knows, is different; he is entering the web, the matrix of a thousand details that make another person real, not just an object to be wanted.”

“But she wasn't a little girl, she was a beautiful woman, tall and lovely, with tresses of black hair that curved like cupped hands around her face.”

“Because the world was not the world, that was the thing, that was the terrible truth he had discovered. It was a dream world, a veil of light and sound and matter that the real world hid behind. Walkers in a dream of death, that's what they were, and the dreamer was the girl, this Girl from Nowhere. The world was a dream and she was dreaming them!”

“Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.”

“Mary adored her mother with a hopeless affection, like an unrequited crush. She understood this feeling was common in middle children, as Mary was, but there was also a story.”

“Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman's pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody's business but yours.”

“The lie had worked so far, but Lacey felt its softness, like a floor of rotten boards beneath her feet.”