“After school I arrived at home, took off my shoes at the door, kissed the 8x10 photo of black Jesus in the hall, ate Froot Loops over the sink so Nana wouldn’t scream if I spilled milk on the carpet, and then watched tv.”
“Silence, deep concealment, particularly about the dead, is ultimately a vacuum that fills with truth.”
“Chien woke in the dark, before sunrise, just as the rooster began to crow.”
“The Strange Bird’s first thought was of a sky over an ocean she had never seen, in a place far from the fire-washed laboratory from which she emerged, cage smashed open but her wings, miraculous, unbroken.”
“He only came back because Melvin said he would kill him if he didn’t pay off his debt by the end of the week.”
“This flood October. And in the early light her mother goes for her, rips her from sleep, takes her from a dream of the world."
“Joan Ashby was frank with Martin Manning right from the start: “There are two things you should know about me.”
“His fingers caress what look like the colorful bindings of the Collection Hetzel.”
“It was too late to be a lunch, too early to be a dinner, this disappointing collection of food Greg was packing.”
“She drives a beater Volvo station wagon that used to belong to her parents.”
“It’s a long train ride from the middle of a New England nowhere to the middle of a New Jersey nowhere.”
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