“I look for my sister but it's hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can't tell the living from the dead. It's all just blurry light, light smeared like some celestial fingerprint all over the rocks and the reef and the sunken garbage. Olivia could be everywhere.”
“Then the noise faded and Legs squinted up at the sky, the moon so bright you'd never think it could be merely rock like the earth's common rock and lifeless, merely reflected light from an invisible sun and not a powerful living light of its own...”
“Here in a place where there's just wind an waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning. Always looking over its shoulder.”
“I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise, and I wish I could sink my hands into your flesh and light lanterns along your spine so you know there's nothing but light when I see you.”
“Now that it's over, I just wanna hold herI'd give up all the world to see That little piece of heaven looking back at me.Now that it's over, I just wanna hold her.I've gotta live with the choices I've madeAnd I can't live with myself today.”
“Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”