“It is in such browbeating weather that West Condon prodigal son (there is an army of them) Georgie Lucci steps down off the bus from the city on his first return in nearly five years to the scene of his youthful indiscretions”
“Some nights, when the rabbit and I are both down on the floor playing tug of war with his toy carrot, he will suddenly freeze in one position and stop everything, as if a great breakthrough has finally arrived.”
“If you’re an addict of detective fiction, you may have heard of me, Charles Mickledore.”
“It was not because their duties brought them close together that Marakulin and Glotov were friends.”
“Except for what happened with little George Meeker, my first year in the classroom went rather smoothly.”
“Tick walked a circle around the new woman’s cargo. Somebody who knew knots had tied that tarp up—a single trucker’s hitch, no nonsense.”
“My son X-rays me, entrails and bones. He knows what pain constricts my throat if someone happens to raise their voice.”
“I could hear the sea. That was perhaps an hour after I became paralyzed, although I couldn’t be sure as I soon lost track of time. ”
“Well worth it, well worth it, the last of the legendary glaciers and cell phone service besides. They have seen a wolf and bighorn sheep and a hundred cheeping pikas in the rocks and a pair of boxing marmots.”
"A man and a woman from a major corporation had visited Rebecca’s school: the same corporation that had underwritten the new wing of the gymnasium, which now bore the corporation’s name.”
“Dandelions cover the banks of Ikuta River. They are an expression of the town’s character—Ikuta is like springtime, when the dandelions bloom. ”
“A priest is only a priest, even if he knows Latin, which would be notable.”
“It was easy to see at first glance that Lígia was a determined person with her own inner light.”
“On Broadway and Twenty-Eighth I stand in the middle of a bike lane. I look at a bike coming at me.”
“Like an early 19th-century poet, when I have melancholy moments and feel the world is too much for us and that late and soon we lay waste to our powers in getting and spending, I’m forced to pause and reflect upon my experiences with the dead and the hold they exert on our lives.”
“He is almost beautiful—running with the San Gabriels over one shoulder, the rise of the Hollywood Freeway as it arcs above the Pasadena Freeway over the other.”
“Sunday, ten thirty a.m. The city was still half-asleep. The clean, quiet streets gleamed in the bluish light.”
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