“A wave would arrive, all out of breath, but, as it had nothing to report, it would disperse in apologetic salaams.”

“They would fade away-and I would be left alone to face the people at school,and the reporters,and Adriane,and all the places where Max had taken my hand or breathed in my ear or told me he loved me,and the emptiness that used to be Chris.”

“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”

“In battle nothing is ever as good or as bad as the first reports of excited men would have it.”

“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”

“Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.”