“Mom is a compulsive reader. She reads for pleasure, she reads to edify herself, but more often than not, she reads because she can't help it. I understand. The minute I find myself sitting still, I...”

“We talk about how he and Leanne are doing knowing full well there is no sufficient answer.p 294”

“The tough times start," he said, "the day the last casserole dish is returned.”

“It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth-one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.”

“I stand beside Tom's barn and ponder the benign heedlessness of the people in the speeding cars, and here I am in the speeding car. In my heart I wish the bypass had never been built; in my car I n...”

“Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard.p 44”

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain...”

“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.”