“And there was a tree stump outside the Black Barn everyone called 'Dave's stump' because for over three years, until a few weeks before our arrival, he'd sat on it to read and write, sometimes even when it was raining or cold.”

“Caring about him was like trying to love a tree stump - a cold, mean-spirited paternalistic tree stump. With fungus.”

“Every time I leave the apartment, I mistake the tree stump across the street for two people kissing/holding each other. I’ve forgotten every time that it’s a tree stump. I’m disappointed every time it’s a tree stump.”

“[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated. ”

“I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized."Everyone in the room stared at him."I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.”

“...how time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see.”