“…prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.”

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

We’re surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don’t move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Now I’m starting to think he wasn’t supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.

Coaches who shoot par in the summer are the guys I want on my schedule in the winter.

My love lives in my cheeks – gives me away by the first smile. all the lines from years spent laughing, warm with extra freckles in the summer; a poker face that doesn’t keep once my knees fold.

He doesn’t deserve it. he can have any girl in the world’s love and he took yours. someone who deserves so much more than a summer fling

The whole town’s talking about the way Jax Stone sat in your hospital room and snag to you until you came out of your coma. Then he apparently wouldn’t leave you alone for a minute. The boy sounds hooked.

They hit like waves, the memories of those old summer days. Memories you’d have thought to erase, but they crash ashore without haste.

They tell me summer is coming, and soon we’ll be dancing on the shore. Waiting for the moonlight to light me up amongst the starlight.

And since all this loveliness can not be Heaven, I know in my heart it is June.

Even if I had stayed she wouldn’t have ever wanted me. She didn’t want me for anything more than a summer fling. I was a way of moving on for her.