“It had to be the hardest thing, even if hed never known it himself to accept that the ones you loved would find their own way home.”

“She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared.”

“But this dagger this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boys toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.”

“It had to be the hardest thing, even if he’d never known it himself – to accept that the ones you loved would find their own way home.”

“But this dagger – this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy’s toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.”

“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized ...”

“She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared.”

“But this dagger this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boys toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”