“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”

“Summer coming like a car from down the highway.”

“Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.”

“What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.”

“Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.”

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)”

“Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize i...”

“#NAME?”

“We was used to each other in the way I s'pose two old bats can get used to hangin upside-down next to each other in the same cave, even though they're a long way from what you'd call the best of fr...”

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”

“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away a...”

“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of makin...”