There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.

i want to hear what's happened to you," she said evenly after a while. she gestured in the direction, down river, of the butcher shop. "it's just that there is nowhere else to start," she said gently. "niether of us is the same. but i'm different because of small, good, manageable things. you're different because ... things i don't know.

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that.

I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.