With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you don’t so much interpret as breathe.

She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world.

I was wholly invested in my friendships. I might have tested them sometimes, but only to reassure myself that they were permanent. A mistake, of course.

I suppose that when you're growing up, you're bound to reach an age when you feel buffeted by all the changes in your life, when either your mind begins outpacing your body or your body begins outpacing your mind and you're not quite in conversation with yourself anymore.

Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum.

I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.