“...but most houses in California were built without roots, leaving us trapped above ground with the light.”

“What went on in that head of his? I would soon come to understand that he gave voice to only a fraction of the thoughts that swam behind his eyes. It was not nearly so clean and smooth in there as it seemed. Other lives were houses in that mind, parallel worlds. Maybe we're all built a little that way. But most of us drop hints. Most of us leave clues. My father was more careful.”

“Of my grandfather's eighty-six years on the planet, he had lived two of them in Alaska...But those two years had expanded, sponge-like, in his memory, overtaking much of the rest. Whole decades had passed in California without producing a single worthy anecdote”

“ . . . perhaps the reasons for a man to leave his life were too obvious for him to name.”

“I had grown into a worrier, a girl on constant guard for catastrophes large and small, for the disappointments I now sensed were hidden all around us right in plain sight.”

“So much that seems harmless in daylight turns imposing in the dark. What else, you had to wonder, was only a trick of light?”

“This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall.”