The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself.

Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.

There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it's the right unhappiness.

Birds were like dinosaurs' better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.

It was a way of recognizing places of enchantment: people falling asleep like this.

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.

You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction-no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy's disgust.