“It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy—getting to stay out late and having other people wash your clothes and bring you plates of stuff---get undercut by having to play football.”

“Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out.”

“The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts.”

“When you do try to picture the boys who do ask you out, they're absolutely featureless, like old carvings eroded by centuries of rain and wind.”

“We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled over me from inside out. What is about to happen has stood in line to happen. All the roads out of that instant have been closed, one by one.”

“The first night he slept with her, he took a washrag and a jug of wood alcohol to get rid of her makeup, saying he wanted to know what he was getting into.”

“I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.”