“The world was in truth made of jackstraws. The world was very combustible, the human body was partible in ways heretofore unimagined. What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue ...”

“Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not ...”

“So they all went home afterwards. My sisters and I sat on the veranda and cried until a storm drove us inside. We agreed to meet in the barn loft for crying once a week but after a while we forgot....”

“What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will.”

“The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting.”

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is a...”

“I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later...”

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, cap...”