“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they were all along, busy with living; they don’t talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day if entirely different; I am thoroughly foreign.”
“By nine o’clock the movers were gone. Ellie and Gage, both exhausted. were sleeping in their new rooms, Gage in his crib, Ellie on a mattress on the floor surrounded by a foothill of boxes--her billions of Crayolas, whole broken, and blunted; her Sesame Street posters; her picture books; her clothes; heaven knew what else.”
“I’d never been to the Point […] Once Dazza and I decided we were going to do it. […] But then we started thinking about those stories they told in the front bar – wild Nungas with spears, boomerangs that come from nowhere and knock you senseless. We got scared and ran all the way back to the Port.”
“In Montana, ospreys lived in the cottonwoods all along the big rivers, where they dived on trout and whitefish. Roy had been pleasantly surprised to find that Florida had ospreys, too. It was remarkable that the same species of bird was able to thrive in two places so far apart, and so completely different. If they can do it, Roy thought, maybe I can too.”