Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.

I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.

I said shut up once already, with my mouth.

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

I didn't really expect to be coming to the Oscars.