“The roof of the big top was dark blue, spangled with silver stars, and it reminded him of something but he couldn't think what, and then he realized it was the roof - the vault of heaven - in a side chapel at the Catholic church where his mother dragged them three times a day on Sunday when they were very small, until she ran out of energy and let the devil have them. (One Good Turn)”

“The window opened in the same direction as the king's, and there, summer-bright and framed by the darkness of the stairwell, was the same view. Costis passed it, and then went back up the stairs to look again. There were only the roofs of the lower part of the palace and the town and the city walls. Beyond those were the hills on the far side of the Tustis Valley and the faded blue sky above them. It wasn't what the king saw that was important, it was what he couldn't see when he sat at the window with his face turned toward Eddis.”

“He was her drug. He always had been. And until that very moment neither of them realized that she was his as well. He couldn't get enough”

“When the trees and the power lines crashed around you, when the very roof gave way above you, when the light turned to darkness and water turned to dust, did you call on Him? When you called on Him, was He somewhere up there, or was He as near as your very breath?”

“The fire had burned to coals and he lay looking up at the stars in their places and the hot belt of matter that ran the chord of the dark vault overhead and he put his hands on the ground at either side of him and pressed them against the earth and in that coldly burning canopy of black he slowly turned dead center to the world, all of it taut and trembling and moving enormous and alive under his hands.What's her name? said Rawlins in the darkness.Alejandra. Her name is Alejandra.”

“His father is out cutting wood, so he goes to his mother.'Mother, I must away and see the world, or I shall go mad.'Says his mother, 'If you must go, go you must, and God go with you! I will bake you a cake. Will you have a little cake with my blessing, or a big cake with my cursing?'Says Jack, 'Make me a big cake, mother. It will last longer.'His mother makes him a big cake, and he sets out. And she is standing on the roof of the house, calling curses after him as far as she can see him.”