“ Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel. Stewart O'Nan
“ They should.""Should be like a wood bee," she said.It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the simplest hope, a nonce catchphrase like so many others lifted from favo… Stewart O'Nan
“ He didn't like to fly--the noise and vibration gave him a headache--but, as with anything new, he was excited by the strangeness of it. The disjuncture intrigued him: stepping through a door in one pl… Stewart O'Nan
“ For most of her life she just expected things would work out, that people would be kind. Now she recognized her good fortune for what it was. She'd been lucky in so much, it had left her woefully unpr… Stewart O'Nan
“ Her address book confirmed it, the pages inhabited equally by the living and the dead....Each name called up raucous dinner parties and gin-and-tonics on sunny patios, lazy Saturday afternoons at the… Stewart O'Nan
“ Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed,… Stewart O'Nan
“ She had a vision of the two of them trapped on a tiny raft surrounded by miles of open water. It would be a kind of test, like surviving on a desert island--but that's what a marriage was, wasn't it?… Stewart O'Nan
“ Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them. Stewart O'Nan
“ The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in the streets, Bedouins and bankers. The Turks and Haredim, the showy Greek and Russian processions --… Stewart O'Nan
“ It was the ultimate cautionary tale, the moral being Don't fall, as if they were made of glass. In a sense they were--their fragility was irrefutable, medically proven--and yet Emily detested the inev… Stewart O'Nan
“ I'm sorry you don't like coming back here," her mother often said, to cap whatever petty dust-up they'd had. How could Emily explain: it wasn't her mother or Kersey she'd disowned, but her earlier sel… Stewart O'Nan
“ Somewhere in this latest humiliation there was a lesson in self-reliance. He'd failed so completely that he'd become his own man again. Stewart O'Nan
“ Why was he drawn to complicated women, or were all women--all people, finally--complicated? Stewart O'Nan
“ The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love? Stewart O'Nan
“ There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get.... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to surprise his… Stewart O'Nan
“ You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved. Stewart O'Nan
