“Love is opening up, removing stitches prematurely, letting the wound tremble in the sunlight.”

“And she wouldn't be there. She'd be off somewhere he'd never find her. That was the nature of the woman he loved, to be elsewhere.”

“Maybe people are strangers because time makes them strangers, not because you don't know them, and people you've never met are strangers because you've spent so long not knowing them.”

“Words hurt. Words limit the way we see the world.”

“Because I am thought to be important I am left alone. They call me doctor but I am not the kind of doctor they believe I am. I cannot mend a broken leg and am useless to everyone onboard. By virtue of my professorship I am granted peace.”

“The mountain in the distance grows darker as we approach it, but it isn't black, and the thought slips into my mind: perfect blackness is impossible now. And because I don't know what that means, and because this is all a dream, I accept the thought unconditionally.”

“Inside a barn is a whole universe, with its own time zone and climate and ecosystem, a shadowy world of swirling dust illuminated in tiger stripes by light shining through the cracks between the boards. Old leather tack, lengths of chain, rope, and baling twine dangled from nails and rafters and draped over stall railings. Generations of pocketknives lay lost in the layers of detritus on the floor.”