Norah watched him, serious and utterly absorbed in his task, overcome by the simple fact of his existence.

The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?

Either things grow and change or they die.

Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.

He carried Paul inside and up the stairs. He gave him a drink of water and the orange chewable aspirin he like and sat with him on the bed, holding his hand...This was what he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image. A spareness that held beauty and hope and motion - a kind of silvery poetry, just as the body was poetry in blood and flesh and bone.

Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.

Though Lexington is not a small town, it sometimes feels like one, with circles of acquaintance overlapping once, then again; the person you meet by chance at the library or the pool may turn out to be the best friend of your down-the-street neighbor. Maybe thats why people are so friendly here, so willing to be unhurried.