“And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Mald...”

“I believe a family just isnt complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddys nose right around the time they divorced.”

“Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, expo...”

“Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?”

“The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didnt bite. Humans were mo...”

“Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“Shit, man, if you see a dog scratching at the dirt trying to dig something up, walk away real fast, he said, then pulled a little square of paper from his pocket and swallowed whatever was folded i...”

“Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.”