We do have trouble dealing with death, but it's the one thing that is guaranteed we are all going to have to do, and we are going to have to face it many times before we die ourselves.

It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough