“Being unconscious with somebody, that's a big deal.”

“Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons.”

“Well, you look weird. New pajamas? Did somebody exhume you last night?" -- Kiwi, Swamplandia!”

“There's something pitiable and terrifying about the unconscious bully. His crumpled nose and hat.... This is the first true thing that Brauser and I have ever shared, this fear, besides dog-eared songbooks and cafeteria noodles.I wonder, briefly, if I could eat Brauser if it came to that.At this point, we have been alone on the glacier for fourteen minutes.”

“Any place, then, can become a cemetery. All it takes is your body. It's not fair, I think, and I get this petulant wish for ugly flowers and mourners, my mother's old familiar grief. Somebody I love to tend my future grave. Probably this is the wrong thing to be wishing for.”

“Forever, just the word fills Beverly with an unaccountable, schoolmarmish sort of rage. Forever, that's got to be bad math, right? Such terrifying math.”

“But her favorite is the Houdini fantasy. Big Red disagrees with his biographers, who say that he was driven by his longing to shuck off this mortal coil. She knows that he was all the time just searching for a box that could hold him.”