“Sometimes I think I collect souls to make up for the ones I've lost over the course of my life.”

“Even back then, I guess, I suspected that sometimes the only available choice in life is to spit on death and run.”

“Of course, this memory makes me sorrowful now, for it anyone ever knew the shape of me, it was Amelia - and not just the outer lines of me, either, but all my innards as well. She was as necessary as the sun to me. She was the quiet heat that shimmered inside my shadow and made it live, and without her, I am a little darker.”

“What I really wanted to do was linger in the tidy lines that Marcus had scored into the earth. I wanted to sit in the exact center of the spiral and wait for the plants to unfurl themselves. I wanted them to climb and rove over my limbs until I burst into bloom with them.”

“Death almost always rearranges life, sometimes for the worse, many times for the better,”

“Amelia and I were at the age where wonderful things sometimes still did happen, but far less often than they used to.”

“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.”