“They're horrible little creatures. All snot and smelly feet and pestering questions.""Then why did you go into teaching?""It was either that or sit at home with Mother all day. I picked the lesser of two evils.”

“On the drive up here, I saw a goose," he says. "A Canada goose. Fred told me they shit something horrible. They migrate between the north and the south, don't they? Like seniors.”

“I can't believe she's lived this long. God must be avoiding her.”

“They're horrible little creatures. All snot and smelly feet and pestering questions.""Then why did you go into teaching?""It was either that or sit at home with Mother all day. I picked the lesser of two evils.”

“Do you see? The story I have to tell is so small, of the people who stayed when everyone else fled.”

“These cords that God makes, Reverend Bauxite thought, we stand holding one end while they run taut into the darkness.”

“There are no words for so much loss, not right after it happens.”

“His voice, what he said, remains, and it is here, all of those voices are here, in what I am telling you. If in the beginning there was the word, then perhaps, with humility at the smallness of our powers, in words a small part of us can return.”