“Explaining how the two of them, up there in the Green Mountains, had managed to dial down life's urgencies and dial up its pleasures and richness, Gary put it beautifully and poetically: "We've discovered a way" he confided with a sense of gleeful wonderment, "to bend time." I imagined Tracy and me engaged in a similar conspiracy a dozen years or so from now.”

“Asking the head I have now to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dialing your own telephone number on your own telephone: Either way, you get an engaged signal. Or your own answer message, if you have that kind of phone system.”

“I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service.You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time.”

“Love was like notches on a speaker that could be cranked up and down, the decibels of desire, the frequencies of feeling. Sometimes she thought that she might have cranked it all the way up and broken the dial before the music had even started.”

“They're headed for some place called the Great Barrier.""A place that doesn't exist." Liv was shaking her head, checking the rotating dials on her wrist.Link pushed away his plate, still covered with food. "So let me get this straight. We're gonna go down into theTunnels and find this moon outta time with Liv's fancy watch?""Selenometer." Liv didn't look up from copying numbers from the dials into her red notebook.”

“I picked up the phone and dialed Andrea's extension. “Yes?” “He glued the chair to my ass.” Silence.”