“Knowledge is power. In the wrong hands, knowledge is trouble.”

“Please, Kenzie, Jonah thought. Please, please, please back off from this. His life wasn't much, but it was all he had, this small safe space, walled in by secrets.”

“Imagine what it's like to be (untouchable)Better not take a chance on me (untouchable)I'm the bad boy your mama told you aboutI'm dangerous, without a doubtEven coming off a ten-year droughtUntouch...”

“Emma was horrified and transfixed at the same time. She was watching Jonah Kinlock doing what he did best. There was a certain macabre beauty in watching form and function wedded together. In Jonah...”

“Aftera brief silence, Kenzie said, "Don't you believe in second chances?"The room seemed a little colder, a little darker, as if a shadow had passed over the sun. "Sonny Lee always said, 'Fool me o...”

“All at once it seemed like too much of a betrayal to continue to pretend that his brother was delirious, hallucinating, not in his right mind. Lying when he was telling the truth. Maybe Kenzie was ...”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”