“You're the one with the badge," I admitted, "but I'm the one being haunted by a seven-year-old in a ballerina costume.”

“I tell you that there are eighty-plus-year-old nudists cavorting on your property, Ashley O'Ballivan, and all you can do is laugh?”

“Liking something and wanting to take it for a ride are two very different things', Joslyn sais, climbing out of the truck to stand on the ground. Hutch's eyes sparkled as he came around to face her. 'I'm not touching that one with a ten-foot pole,' he told her.”

“But he was bent on making that ride, Brody, and if he hadn't gotten himself thrown that day, he'd have done it some other day. What I'm trying to get at here is that folks seem to come into this life with a list of things they need to get done while they're here inscribed on their souls. Old or young, when their work is done, they leave.”

“Courage, like so many other things, was not something one did or didn't have; it was a decision, a choice.”

“It’s not smart to hold yourself away from the shocks of life, the good ones or the bad. They’re all part of the mix, and paradoxically, shying away from them only makes things harder.”

“Nostalgia is a way of remembering people and places and things, and wishing things hadn't changed. It has a sweetness to it. Sadness is just--well--being sad.”