“I figure that if a secret has an answer, it'll out on its own if it's meant to, and if it doesn't then maybe providence has a better reason for keeping it hidden than you think.”

“The body is just the body. It has it's own structures, it's own laws. It's a thing unto itself. When it breaks down, that's it.”

“Everything in the world has its two faces, however. Weeds sometimes blossom into artful flowers. Beauty walks hand in hand with ugliness, sickness with health, and life tiptoes around in the horned shadow of death. The trick is to recognize which is which and to recognize what you're dealing with at the time.”

“...Maybe it was just the perfect realization to all ones' dreams....where a magic elixir could heal you and make you strong, where men could make roses bloom with the single touch of a thumb, and where the bigger women were, so much the better.”

“If there was one thing Brenda Dyerson was good at, she knew it, was cooking up the scraps destiny had laid out on its plates for her.”

“Sometimes it's possible to see misfortune coming and prepare for it, I guess, but most of the time, when a person disappears, it's as unexpected and shocking as hail in the middle of June.”

“Death is a kind of guilt in itself. We're all alive in this world together, and we're also all mortal, but when one person pulls his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you'll be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself.”