“Joe might have called that place godforsaken but I could see a whole lot of proof that if there was a God, He’d been there.”

“The way I see it, you have two options. Run, run like hell, or dive in”

“Recollection hurt so much; I could barely remember my unbroken self”

“Life was short, and if it wasn't sweet you were in the wrong place with the wrong people”

“I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn’t matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, swinging my legs off a pier until boats rolled in with crates full of oysters and crayfish still gasping. Pulling fishhooks out of my feet because I never wore shoes, playing with other kids whose names I never knew. Those were the unforgettable summers. There were outback towns where you couldn’t see the roads for red dust, grids of streets with wandering dogs and children who ran wild and swam naked in creeks. I remembered climbing ancient trees that had a heartbeat if you pressed your ear to them. Boomboom-boomboom. Dreamy nights sleeping by the campfire and waking up covered in fine ash, as if I’d slept through a nuclear holocaust. We were wanderers, always with our faces to the sun.”

“Where you've been isn't as important as where you're headed”

“I thought about loneliness. How its not something you catch and mostly we choose it. How a trouble shared is a trouble halved but things like love and joy are multiplied when you have someone to share them with.”