“When you bite into a chocolate truffle, you don't want to find oat bran.”

“There are no real Californians. There are only people who live there and people who don't.”

“Nuclear didn't describe families. How could it? Dry physics was not equal to that task. In the twentieth century we needed a biological metaphor, Darwinian in scope, to suggest the gnash and crash of carnivorous life in the family gene pool. But for the 21st century, the new century, I think the metaphors must be chemical. Molecular. In the molecular family people are connected without being bound. They spindle themselves around shared experiences and affections rather than splashing in the shared gene pool.”

“She spoke with the usual cadences of the young: sentences curling upward at the end, all statements fading into a smoky, implied question mark, as though nothing could be said with any reasonable certainty.”

“It's harder to appreciate what you don't have to look hard to find.”

“She climbed into his embrace. Bryan stayed awake until he heard her breathing steadily. "When you find your wings, don't fly away," he whispered.”

“You have something you want to do. Something you like to do. Something you're good at. Why don't we start with that? Why don't you let that be the entire plan for now?”