“Like they said, when you have a boy you worry about one boy, when you have a girl…you worry about all the boys.”
“The rest of them would just dry off as much as possible then throw shorts and tees on over their suits. They were from the Copper Country—with water everywhere you turned—so they were used to sitting on towels in their car seats in the summer.”
“It wasn’t hard to track Stevie down in the crowd. Lizzie found the girl in the purple tank fairly easily then scanned a twenty-yard radius looking for the boy. Sure enough, there he was, skulking behind a shortcake booth, eyes huge as he watched the purple tank girl enjoying a strawberry ice cream cone. Not wanting to embarrass the kid, she told Finn she’d round Stevie up then meet him and Annie back at the minivan. She surreptitiously circled the booth until she came up behind Stevie. In her best secret-agent voice, while pretending she didn’t see him, she whispered, “Psst, the eagle takes flight in five minutes. I repeat, the eagle takes flight in five minutes.” She saw Stevie’s body grow rigid, then relax. “Roger that,” he said under his breath.”
“Think of it as a journey that you are driving. Suddenly you realize you are going in the wrong direction, have been for some time. Do you pull over and spend hours trying to figure out why you went the wrong way? No, you turn the car around and start to drive in the right direction. Along the way, you start to think about the reason you got off course, but you do that as you’re headed toward your destination.”
“grandmother was in her kitchen, fixing”
“come back since even though Eino, understanding his loss, told”
“God, Liz. I…I can’t believe it’s you,” the shock was evident in his voice. “You’re so…so…old.” His hand left hers as he covered his eyes, shaking his head. “I mean. I didn’t mean.”
“Too much to hope for that you guys didn’t hear that, eh?”
“Oooh yah, it’s good to be back in da Yoop, eh?” Katie crowed out in an exaggerated Yooper accent as they crossed the bridge to Hancock.”
“What daddies did for their little girls, never mind if their babies were ten or thirty-five.”
“They honestly wouldn’t do the operation if you couldn’t find a way to pay for it?” “That’s right. They run a business, Liz, they can’t just be giving it away.” “That’s what you get for going to the University of Michigan Hospital.” “I know the Spartan in you can’t stand it, but you have to admit U of M has one of the best hospitals around.” “Okay, I admit it, grudgingly, but only because State doesn’t have a hospital of their own. If they did, I’m sure it’d be better.”
“collected the runners up from the bed.”
“You can take the girl out of da Yoop, but you can’t take da Yoop out of the girl.”
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work. ~ Daniel H. Burnham”
“The women were on the lawn at Alison’s camp. In the U.P., all cottages, cabins, summer homes of any kind were called camps.”
“What? What’s the third date?” Katie asked, not having been on a third date in seventeen years. “That’s usually the date that ‘it’ happens,” Lizzie explained. “That’s when you fuck,” Alison said at the same time. Katie frowned at Alison and motioned for Lizzie to continue.”
“The route home they’d chosen was her idea. She said she, Alison, and Katie had done it years ago when they’d spent a weekend at Mackinac Island. Within the course of one afternoon, they’d swum in Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, hitting three of the five Great Lakes.”
“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”
“Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one man’s solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude”
“The reason I never want a book to end is that I start to feel like the characters are my friends. I'll miss them when they're gone.”
“I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!”
“There was a moment during this time, when his face was on hers, cheek on cheek, brow on brow, heavy skull on skull, through soft skin and softer flesh. He thought: skulls separate people. In this one sense, I could say, they would say, I lose myself in her. But in that bone box, she thinks and thinks, as I think in mine, things the other won't hear, can't hear, though we go on like this for sixty years. What does she think I am? He had no idea. He had no idea what she was.”
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