“The dusk here does not arrive on the shoulders of golden sunsets any more, but on the heels of long, encroaching shadows of untraceable trees in the distance, gloomy parallel patterns that cascade over the undulating landscape of unevenly dispersed corpses and other things.”

“I was a shadow among shadows brooding over the fate of other shadows that I alone strove to summon up out of the all-pervading dusk.”

“Our shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet.”

“At any given time, most relationships are uneven-one person is more in need of support than another. A real friendship is mutually satisfying over the long haul.”

“The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside's repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day had fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again--the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time.”

“Catherine's face was just like the landscape—shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession; but the shadows rested longer, and the sunshine was more transient.”