“We spend this life looking for a center, a place where we can suspend without a wobble. The specific coordinates are elusive, scalable only by the heart. _Population: 485_, p 202”

“Memory is a means of possession, but eventually, the greatest grace is found in letting go. _Population: 485_, p 178.”

“Her eyes are wide and steady beneath the brim of her floppy cap. How far out of infancy do we lose this gaze, with its utter absence of expectation or prejudice? What is it like to simply see what is before you, without the skew of context?p 342”

“In specific moments of ground-level clarity, I recognize the dumbing down of the nation for what it is: an act of charity committed specifically for knotheads like me.”

“We plunge into love with a naivete that ignores all prior humiliations. Thank goodness, I guess. Because we never learn, we reach for love again and again.”

“...here up north we worship the sun in big gulps.p 135”

“In 1951, a man bought a pickup truck because he needed to load things up and move them. Things like bricks and bags of feed. Somewhere along the line trendsetters and marketers got involved, and now we buy pickups -- big, horse-powered, overbuilt, wide-assed, comfortable pickups -- so that we may stick our key in the ignition of an icon, fire up an image, and drive off in a cloud of connotations. I have no room to talk. I long to get my International running part so I can drive down roads that no longer exist.”