Always in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something--he could not grasp what-that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sled to a stop. He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there.

Memory is the happiness of being alone.

Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.

He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.

I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.

She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.

Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.