“Out popped Paul Duffy, in plain clothes except for a state police windbreaker and a badge clipped to his belt. He looked at me - I think by now I had dropped the bat to my side, at least, though I must have looked ridiculous anyway - and he raised his eyebrows. 'Get back in the house, Babe Ruth.”

“With the minivan in the air, rolling counterclockwise, the engine racing, Laurie screaming -- a fraction of a second, that's all -- Jacob would have thought of me -- who had held him, my own baby, looked down into his eyes -- and he would have understood I loved him, no matter what, to the very end -- as he saw the concrete wall flying forward to meet him.”

“....I never expected to lose in court. In practice, I did lose, of course. Every lawyer loses, just as every baseball player makes an out seventy percent of the time he goes to bat.”

“At seventeen, I knew: my entire childhood had been just a prelude to this girl. I had never felt anything like it, and still haven't. I felt changed by her, physically.I became a different person, myself, the person I am now. And everything that came after-my family, my home, our entire life together-was a gift she gave me.”

“We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.”

“All they got locked up in this hole is my body. That's all they got, my body, not me. I'm everywhere, see? Everywhere you look, junior, everywhere you go.”

“I had a childish attraction to men of my father's generation, as if I still harbored a faint hope of being unorphaned, even at this late date.”