About Grace Quotes
"Calling them dreams let him edge as close as he could to what they were: sensations—experiences, even—that visited him as he slept and faded after he woke, only to reemerge in the minutes or hours or days to come."
"But occasionally, rarely, what he saw when he slept was different—sharper, truer, and premonitory."
"Like dreams, these apparitions ambushed him in the troubled fringes of sleep, and once they were finished, they were almost always lost, disbanding into fragments he could not reassemble later."
"These were dreams deeper than dreaming, beyond remembering. These dreams were knowing."
"What a marvel it had been to see the particulars of the world—rainbows of oil floating in puddles; columns of gnats spiraling over Ship Creek; the crisp, scalloped edges of clouds."
"Memory gallops, then checks up and veers unexpectedly; to memory, the order of occurrence is arbitrary."
"The convergences of a life are a series of abandonments that we hope beyond reason will eventually be reconciled."
"To consider water on any scale was to confront a boundless repetition of small events."
"Water was a sanctuary—not only hot showers or condensation on our window or the sight of Knik Arm on a fall day, but reading about it, collecting it in an eyedropper, freezing it, sublimating it."
"Two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen—always—at a 104.5-degree angle."
"Every thirty-one hundred years, a volume of water equivalent to all the oceans passed through the atmosphere."
"The things we see are only masks for the things we can’t see."
"It’s impossible, but I believe you. We have to leave."
"The dead are gone and so their power over the living is only temporary."
"You may hate yourself for it, but the body’s demands are incontrovertible."
"Eventually you fall asleep and eventually you eat."
"Somewhere icebergs were calving off glaciers. Somewhere it was snowing."
"How easy it would be to open his mouth and pull water into his lungs."
"She was a grown woman. An adult. She could make her own decisions."
"But you must learn to let go. Believe me, it's not easy. But you must let whatever will happen, happen."
"A snowflake, a honeycomb, a spider’s web stretched across the doorframe."
"He would write a book. He would write a treatise on water, a natural history of it."
"Gates were creaking open inside him—paths, long sealed off, revealed themselves once more."
"He’s studying some photochemical in them. He thinks it might help in human neurology. Something like that."
"Our bodies are water, too. Our skin and eyeballs."
"Maybe you changed the dream with your daughter, as you did with the girl across the street. Now do you see?"
"Hope was a sunrise, a friend in an alley, a whisper in an empty corridor."
"You were right about this city. It is gray and bleak, but also beautiful in many ways."
"Our entire bodies, flooded with water, are governed by electricity."
"I dreamed I was going to inadvertently kill my own daughter trying to save her from a flood."
"He watched the highway roll past the window, looming green signs and the mile markers flashing past. He tore open a pack of gas station doughnuts and fished them, one after another, into his mouth."
"The road glided past, a blur of gray seemingly way too far beneath them."
"The smell of grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches drifted through the compartment; two Inuit boys by the windows stared into the screens of their handheld video games with the ardor of believers."
"The roadside blurred; the centerline whisked under the hood."
"The wind assumed its voice: moaning against the window, humming around the roof corners; hissing through drafts."
"Who among us, in our lowest hour, can expect to be saved? Have you loved your life? Have you cherished each miraculous breath?"
"A solitary snow crystal struck the pane and held there and expired."
"The troposphere, at that latitude, was about seven miles thick: a booming, swirling ocean of air."
"The clouds blowing through it were nimbostratus—made of ice, improbably blue in the moonlight, a collection of crystals so thin you’d feel nothing, only a chill inside your pores, if you could reach up and pass a hand through one."
"I think I saw a gal like that out there. A couple months ago, maybe? Heading to the university land up there."
"The long freeze, death or diapause; a baseline experiment in the natural course of things."
"What’s it like where? Rainy. It rains all the time. But it’s beautiful."
"Everyone has someone to call. That’s a fact."
"I’ll be back in a few days. This is a bad idea, isn’t it? Tell me this isn’t a bad idea."
"The auroras appeared around the same time, as if scheduled, and stayed sometimes until after midnight."
"The whole arm of the galaxy seeming to drape over the meadow, as if he could reach up and pluck out some blue and frozen sun as he passed beneath it."
"The air grew colder. Nightfall arrived sooner and sooner. A more permanent snow line advanced down the contours."
"The way we feel as if the more that falls, the more we are forgiven."
"Life has been going on here. For millennia. As it has everywhere."
"The snow that fell was thin and fine as flour."
"A sensitivity had been building within him: the slightest shift in light or air touched the backs of his eyes."
"The way it pushed other thoughts and desires to the edges."
"One by one the ponds gulped down their ice like big, painful pills."
"The stars changed, and soon Naaliyah was finding tiny blades standing up from the ground."
"Everything dripped. Branches unloaded snow like they were finally and completely finished with it."
"The sound of the creek, rushing and bubbling, filled the clearing."
"A hundred thousand will probably hatch on this stretch alone."
"Spring: the sheer vigor of it, the warm and benevolent wind, stirring everything."
"Hope might be visible on some other, still-imperceptible spectrum, coloring the air, like auroras rippling into the sky."
"The walls swarmed with ghosts; they drew out from beneath the furniture, from the radiators and the outlets."
"The swing drifted back and forth behind him."
"Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant Sandy was merely one possibility among an infinity of possibilities."
"Grace could be on the other side, raising her knuckles to knock."
"In memory, in story, in the end, we can remake our lives any way we need."
"Maybe it had been too long and she would always be a stranger to him; maybe he’d go into his final hours, his heart laced with regret."
"Snow gathered on the sleeves and shoulders of his coat and atop the school buses and the waiting cars of parents and along the naked branches of trees."
"In the infinite permutations of an ice crystal, everything repeats itself, but, really, from another point of view, nothing repeats itself."
"It was about love. It was about getting handed at conception a gift that sets you apart from everyone."
"Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve been allowed to live this long, to see these things."
"Isn’t all of it so damn outrageously beautiful?"