“Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer.”

“The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down...”

“People are supposed to accumulate, I thought, as they get older, but I seem to be sloughing off, like a person wrapped in a hundred layers of cellophane, tearing one layer off at a time, trying to get down to me.”

“For the first time in memory, the silence between them wasn’t filled with layers upon layers of lies.”

“That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.”

“To him, they looked like shadows that his wife had left behind. Size 7 shadows of his wife hung there in long rows, layer upon layer, as if someone had gathered and hung up samples of the infinite possibilities (or at least the theoretically infinite possibilities) implied in the existence of a human being.”