“But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.”

“This is the meanest thing anyone’s ever done to me,” I said, through my tear-clogged throat. “I want you to know that.” But even as the words were leaving my mouth, I knew it wasn’t true. In the grand, historical scheme of things, my father leaving us was doubtlessly worse. Which is one of the many things that sucked about my father?? he forever robbed me of the possibility of telling another man, This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and meaning it.”

“The thief’s widow had turned him, before she married him, into a thief of a stupid and terrible kind, because she had made him rob himself.”

“My father had coats the way old spinsters have cats.”

“The sun is a thief: she lures the seaand robs it. The moon is a thief:he steals his silvery light from the sun.The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.”

“He had taught me how to be a man when my real father proved not to be much of one himself and incapable of showing a son the way.”