“Don't nobody like a man they can't figure.”

“Sometimes, you simply must follow your heart," she said. "No reasonable man can blame you for that." A smile. "No reasonable woman can, either.”

“You could never tell if he was with you or not, so Cooley liked to talk to him just in case. Just to remind them both that this was still a human being. He never wanted to catch himself treating Jack like a thing, a chore to be done.”

“They drove through the intersection and turned left on a street Mo had once known like his favorite song. It was strange to him now and he wondered if that was because of the disease or just the natural effect of change itself, the tendency of things to move around on you, to shift when you weren't looking. So that you could get back and be a stranger in your own places.”

“Not everyone has something to say. This will not stop them from saying it.”

“When the inky blackness above shades to a deep blue and the stars lose their hard edge and begin to seem unreal, she rises, wrapping the thin sheet about herself, and steps outside into the morning chill.”

“It occurred to Mo that he didn't have any pictures of himself as a boy. Every photo he owned, every memento of his life, was from after. It was as if he had been born the day he left. He had gone out from here and invented himself.”