“He had learned something already in the course of his journey. If you carried a closed wooden box, people want to know what is in it.”

“When you talk, you repeat what you already know; when you listen, you often learn something.”

“Also: people pretended not to want what they wanted. Pretending tried to hide the will. That was the secret of adult life, the undisclosed motor of the whole thing. People wanted what they wanted. They did what they could to get it. It wasn't complicated. Kenny knew that was the last step he needed to take before he could be an adult: he had to learn what he wanted, then had to learn to want what he wanted.”

“The container had been packed half-full of steel cylinders of some sort, each one of them in a protective wooden box with a lid. Allan was totally exhausted once the heavy corpse was finally in place inside one of the two innermost cylinders. But when he closed the wooden lid and saw the address label, he livened up. Addis Ababa. ‘He’s going to see the world if he keeps his peepers open,’ said Allan.”

“He wanted to pull her inside his skin and carry her around close to his heart.”

“I'm about to rupture something," he was informed, as the big, gaily wrapped box she was carrying smacked into the small of his back again. She had an uncanny ability to hit the same spot every time.”