the book of rituals

• When Al was a child, his mother was always showing him books with shapes in red and blue and yellow and green. Triangles. Squares. Circles, she said, pointing. But what he really liked were the shapes his mother called numbers -- the way the tall stick of a 1 seemed to be hiding its face from the elegant contours of the 2, the way the grandmotherly 3 nestled up to the stick-and-starch lines of the 4. Al's mother reminded him of a 7. If she had had bigger feet, she could have been a 2, he thought, but his mother always seemed to be floating a bit, or leaning -- against a countertop in the kitchen, the wall of the living room. Never quite sitting, never quite straight. (5)
• Years later, he would wonder why he had wanted her so badly. Perhaps it was the hair, so blond that the sun would set it glittering. Perhaps it was as simple ast he bite out of her tuna fish sandwich, although Al was later to learn that people could begin at the beginning of something for many reasons, and not all of them had to do with respect or kindness. Sometimes they were just being thorough. (14-15)
• The parking lot was remarkably busy, even for a Saturday. But the weather was sunny, unusual for March, and Al didn't mind when the only spot he could find was on the other side of the lot; he walked across the black pavement, feeling the first intimations of heat rise up toward him as he watched a young couple, their hands flying in conversation as if waiting for permission to land on the sweet glide slope of the other's body. (18)
• And yet he needed them -- the food, the conversation, the feeling of communion they brought into his day. They were like perfume slipped behind the ear of a beautiful woman, or wine with dinner-- nothing you had to have to live, and yet nothing felt more like life than the experience of them. (29)
• She reminded him of a 4, Al thought. Not the kind where all the lines meet up with each other, clean and straight, but the kind where there was a break at the top, a space where life poured in, for better or worse. (31)

the red suitcase

• For the first time in her life, it felt like she was rounding the corner on happy. She was cooking in Lillian's restaurant, no longer bussing tables. She was living with Isabelle, which many would have said was a strange situation for a twenty-year-old girl, and yet the intricacies of life with Isabelle were satisfying in a way she didn't know how to explain. She knew only that Isabelle, with her startling directness, her own lonely places, and even her occasional waywardness, answered a need in her. (37)
• ...for some reason when she looked across the room at his face, the way he watched her speak, as if listening intently would shorten the distance between her mouth and his ears, it didn't bother her to realize that he had been paying attention even when she wasn't. She paused, looking at the height of him, the way his hands wrapped loosely around the edge of the sink behind him. She found herself wondering what his fingers would feel like resting on her shoulders, touching the underside of her chin. (49)
• But writing about it, she remembered summer afternoons in her grandmother's kitchen, sprinkling sugar over the strawberry slices, the way the smell of the juice came out until the very air around them felt soft. And she thought about what it would be like, a row of strawberries tucked in the midst of Isabelle's carrots and lettuce and tomatoes. (58)
• Chloe's father had always said he could not be expected to adjust his pace to hers, but Finnegan's long legs stayed at her side as they walked the hard-packed dirt trail beside a thin river, his fingers occasionally pointing to the shingled gray bark of a towering lodgepole pine, or the moss-soaked branches of an ancient maple. When they reached a narrow point in the path, he slipped ahead or behind, a movement so effortless that Chloe soon found herself trying it, enjoying the shift in rhythm, the feeling that she was dancing with the path, the trees, with him. (62)
• He smiled, searching her eyes, and then bent down and kissed her, his back curving like the black rock above them. (64)

still life with endive

the thin white box

the throne

the walkabout

• And at the end of the evening, they would go home to bed, and Bob would look in her eyes and the connection was so powerful in its clarity that she knew, without a doubt, that she was loved. (169)
• 'There's a difference between taking care of and caring for.' (172)
• ...the expression on his face was something Abby had seen only in the movies. (179)
• She recognized that tome; it had come out of her mouth as recently as this afternoon. The readiness, the desire, to take over, a modulation set midway between frustration and condescension. As if Isabelle was a child, or worse, so far gone that childhood would be an improvement. (185)

the woodpile

• That was how it was supposed to work, he thought -- a momentary jostling with mortality that awoke you to life's possibilities, the fact that you had been wasting your days being frustrated about that extra-long red light on your way to work or the fact that the grocery store no longer stocked your favorite brand of cereal. You would look up, startled, and then go forward into the world, thankful for the reprieve. / Except, of course, when it didn't happen that way -- when fate just kept coming and took our not you but someone so close to you that you wished its aim had been better. And once it happened, it was like you were snagged in that moment, always waiting, always ready to fall. (188)
• And the traditions -- the glass of wine Charlie was never supposed to drink, a moment to remember who they had been when the only language they didn't know was Italian. (190)
• It was easier to speak a language he knew, even if he was talking to a dead woman. (190)
• But where Charlie had been the warmth of sun on a beach, Lillian was more like fall, loss and bounty brought together. (192)
• And as the fabrics grazed across his skin, he swore he could feel the lines blur between touch and scent, taste and sight and sound. (193)
• It was like driving in England; even if at some point your mind managed to blur the differences in smells and colors and the lilt of an accent -- the fact that the cars were driving in the opposite lane could always be counted on to jolt you back to a full recognition of what country you were in. (194)
• For Tom, life in the city was full of patterns so complex you could never see the separate strands. But the cabin never changed; it was the place he returned to, judged his own progress against its sameness -- the unexpectedly tall top porch step that tripped him as a toddler later becoming a comfortable resting spot for his long teenage legs as he sat on a Fourth of July watching the fireworks. (208)

the notebooks

• Sometimes Finnegan wondered why adults used words at all. Some days words seemed more like clothes, created to distract attention from things you didn't want other people to notice. (216)
• Perhaps it was all the ascents they had done, inuring them to the effects of thinner air, strengthening the muscles of their hearts; perhaps, Finnegan would think, years later, it was the simple fact of facing death more often than others that made them approach life with such joyful honesty. (216)
• He never had the heart to tell his parents that he was scared of heights, that even his own altitude was almost more than he could bear -- that the best part of climbing, the only part that made him continue, was the feeling of their arms around him when he landed back on the ground. For that, he would go as high as they wanted him to. (216)
• Unlike his parents, Finnegan was not fearless, and the thought of ever losing them felt like a hole where his lungs used to be. (217)
• Finnegan watched Maridel counting, polishing the losses of her life as if they were beads on a rosary. (228)
• She was about his age, her hair dark and curling, her height just tall enough to reach the vendor's shoulder. Finnegan couldn't have told you what it was about her; all he knew was that he felt as if he might have room for one more story if it was hers. (234)