“Ruly learned how to drown the summer his family left Lomaland for good.”

“Over the years, Raul remembered many events like if they were TV shows, especially at night, like when he and Alberto cruised around town. The open windows, the wide space of the desert, allowed room for his thoughts to emerge. Some memories played over and over again, like the re-runs he watched during the summer. And depending on the events, he didn’t mind having to sit through them. At least his memories weren’t interrupted with commercials. Click . . . Click . . . Click . . .”

“Well, someone told someone and someone told someone else, you know how it is, that if you filled jugs with water and placed them around the edges of your lawn that you’d be protected. Ghost and witches can’t cross over water, it turns out.”

“It wasn’t permanent like the limestone cross that flagged the mountain peak in the horizon, so he made sure to write it down. After making the sign of the cross, a deep hunger pulled his weight to the bottom of La Loma.”

“He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other.”

“An easy life doesn't teach us anything. In the end it's the learning that matters: what we've learned and how we've grown”

“We learn that there are in creation, Beings - perhaps very numerous - both good and evil.”