“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house.”

“I found her lying naked on the lawn at midnight, can I keep her?”

“Afterward, she'd do yoga on the front lawn in the mizzling rain, lying on her back and then lifting herself slowly into an arch, like a demolition shown in reverse. The pose had mysterious names: Downward Dog, Sun Salute. Once I found her lying on the grass in a random-looking sprawl, the palms of her hands turned up to the drizzle."The Corpse," she explained later. "Feels wonderful.”

“People are funny. They want the front of the bus, the middle of the road and the back of the church. —Mrs. Miracle”

“I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander.”

“Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.”