“In these evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.”

“I found Caeden lying on my bed with both the dogs. He was talking to them and petting Archie behind his ears. It was like our own little family.”

“The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ”

“Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.”

“It seems like maybe we tried to sleep normally a long time ago, when Bentley was a puppy. But then he gradually moved from his little bed to the floor next to our bed. And then from the floor to the foot of the bed. And then from the foot to next to me. And now from next to me to between us, under the covers, with his head on a pillow next to ours.”

“Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, “I think I missed you before I met you even.”