The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.

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.

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

I was the sort of kid who spent a Sunday afternoon prying little trees out of the foundation of his parents' house. I should have given in to the inevitable truth that this was the sort of person I would become, in the end, but I kept fighting it.

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge, no fact can deflect their point of view.

Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.

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.