"Would the man who knew me and loved me still offer his life in place of mine? And could that second-born man ever forgive me for telling him his spirit had no value on this night?"

"She got to breakfast early. Bird Woman was usually the first down for coffee, and indeed she was sipping her coffee ever so delicately. Isabel put down her books and the plastic bag containing Mom."

"It rained. They scrambled with buckets and nets on the black rock promontories that finger the surf, looking into rock pools. They found pools so deep they would hold a man, standing."

"They've already taken down the skies, folded them neatly and slotted them away. Like a billion shards of crystal, the stars have been swept up into one tidy pile."

"My Pattern is very compact, rich in complexity, interwoven delicately with other Patterns. And my missed stitch means that America shall have no September this year."

"For almost three years, since he'd achieved novice rank, the same question had been posed to Tentô each and every day. He was the last of his peers to remain at the monastery, a disappointment to Master, the rest of the brothers, and the novitiate, many of whom now gossiped about Tentô whenever they believed him out of earshot."

"I blinked and laughed, convinced I'd imagined it. But the book was in my hand, a hand-tooled leather cover with lettering so worn that I couldn't read the title."

"We couldn't speak now. We just let our own private thoughts drift by with the waters. Russell Crowe floated by, and Brad Pitt, and the waiter who must always play Death, and they, too, were indifferent."

"The whale song piped into the room makes him sleepy. Tuck, Agnes's father, meditates on the number eight in the solace room at the CCU—in numberical equations, foreign languges, pop songs from that decade. It's the number his wife's BP must rise to for her to have a chance."

"Back up the stairs, Cheryl Lynn goes in search of her suitcase, the one with the bandages and a clean pair of nylons, but the room numbers have disappeared from the walls and the stairs slope and bend."

"I wiggle out, rest my head on her spongy belly, watch the thick veil of water, the trembling, dripping leaves; only a few drops reach my testing palms. 'Grandma, why don't you like the rain?'"

"I can tell you about the road to Chimayo. But no matter what I say, there will be no changing the reason we went there. Chimayo waited for us, for Lenny, like it did all its supplicants. And Chimayo, friend, is very patient."