“If you want inner peace, find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.”

“We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.”

“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife, are in fact plans to protect man.”

“But Golden's dark form in the doorway had imprinted something new and painful on the hard plates of her chest: that old devil, hope. The kind of hope that abandons you in your worst moments and is suddenly there again, weeks later, trailing you like the stubborn, slinking dog who will not take no for an answer. The kind of greedy hope that tricks you into believing that at least some of the things taken from you might be restored, that after everything, you might find your way back to something like happiness.”

“What if you reached the Age of Reason, only to find there was no reprieve,Would you be a Man for All Seasons, or would you just disbelieve?”

“. . . Golden would find himself thinking that if he ever became delusional or foolhardy enough to outfit one of his houses with a complaint box, it would need to be about the size of a refrigerator.”

“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.”