“When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.”

“look'n for a job?" this is when the truck driver asks joad what he is doing and i think it indecates that this story revolves around a very hard time”

“I followed the sensation,thinking of Lend. What it felt like to hold his hand. Watching him draw.Those precious times when he got to be nothing but himself around me. The way he laughed. The look he got in his eyes when he was about to say something he knew was clever. The way he looked at while I talked, like I was all he had ever wanted in the entire world.”

“We'll know we've got it right when they choose for themselves," he used to say. That doesn't make sense. 'That's what I thought too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I don't think he knew himself. But I keep thinking maybe that stray is making exactly the kind of choice he talked about. We're talking about an adult dog, a dog that's been out in the woods for a long time, trying to decide whether or not we can be trusted. Whether this is his place. And it matters to him - he'd rather starve than make the wrong decision.”

“Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he did, he had to admit, he missed his laugh.”

“What is first seen as a loss is now seen as a gain. For he finds solitude, not in far off, quite places; he creates it out of himself, spreads it around him, wherever he may be, because he loves it and slowly he ripens in this tranquility. For the inner process is beginning to unfold, stillness is extraordinarily important.”