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101 " Death's success rate has been 100% so far, yet we still choose to call it a mystery. "
― Anthony Doerr , About Grace
102 " He thought he might say more, but something in her face had closed off, and the opportunity passed. "
103 " but it was also something in Sandy herself, an unwillingness to allow anything more to upset the realm of her understanding. "
104 " He checked the barometer he'd nailed to the family room wall: the pressure was rising. "
105 " He could not look at his daughter without feeling his heart turn over. "
106 " How much easier it would have been if he and Sandy could have fought: a skirmish in the night, some harsh words, some measure of the truth actually spoken aloud. "
107 " He would be relegated to a post best left fastened and buried. "
108 " Over time his images of the baby, like photographs handled too often, had worn down and creased, lost their definition. "
109 " Even the banana plantations, the big, hardy trees on the flanks of Mount St. Andrew, seemed to lilt and acquiesce in the heat. "
110 " the air would get so heavy with moisture he imagined he could feel each bloated molecule as it toppled into his lungs. "
111 " There are comforts in knowing the boundaries of the place you live. Everyone here seems to behave like things are endless. "
112 " The whole thing feels like a pool of water that I'm trying to hold in my hands. "
113 " And this feeling, permeating every waking minute, that he had made too many wrong decisions. "
114 " - even in the midst of grief the mind grapples with a hundred impressions: a pain below the heart, an odor on the breeze. "
115 " How wonderful it is to by my age - our age - and learn you were wrong about such a fundamental thing. "
116 " Yet they spoke now across a glass-topped dining table as if words were just words, as if their histories were equivalent. "
117 " They would not get closer to the truth that night. They watched a period of hockey in silence. Winkler insisted on doing the dishes. Herman insisted on driving him to the bus stop. "
118 " An hour passed and another and then, like a glass of water overfilled - the meniscus inverting, going convex, gravity pulling at the edges, the overflow finally giving way - he could not longer suffer his own cowardice. "
119 " The dread that had been rising all morning rose higher in his throat as if by capillary action. "
120 " Her smile was genuine-looking and later he would mull her question over and over in his head until it mushroomed into something larger. "