“Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.”

“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

“My irritation with Niles was growing, though. I had always thought the quiet man was the most overrated form of human life".”

“The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, "had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man.”

“The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.”

“She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.”

“Gonzaga was the kind of place you’d not even think about loving until you’d left it for a couple of years.”