“We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.”

“To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.”

“Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, or having earthquake supplies. The looming feeling was part of my life. My experience of earthquakes has always been more the fear of them, or the possibility.”

“Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.”

“I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.”

“I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.”

“We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.”

“He'd grown eager to hand off his things, as if the weight of his possessions kept him tethered to this earth, and by giving them away, he could snip those strings.”

“I could no longer remember the way my mother's eyes looked before the slowing. Had they always been so red around the edges? Surely, those pockets of gray beneath her lower lashes were new. She still wasn't sleeping well, but perhaps what I was seeing was just age, a gradual shift that I'd failed to register. I sometimes felt the urge to study recent photographs of her in order to locate the exact point in time when she had come to look so weary.”

“It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.”

“This was the first time I noticed it, the inevitable space between father and man.”