"A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name."

“It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.”

“I also thank Bill McKibben and his 350.org colleagues for the most important work in the world, and the most unending.”

“Even the most recalcitrant climate scientists agree now, the place is heating up. pretty much every one of the lot. Unless some other outcome is written on the subject line of his paycheck. If you were here to get information, Tina, you would not be standing in my laboratory telling me what scientists think.”

“Cub retreated to the familiar grounds of remorse and insufficiency, the terms of his existence, ratified by marriage. He could construct defeat from any available material and live inside it, but for once Dellarobia didn't go there with him. she was going ahead.”

“We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.”

“A flock is nothing but the put-together of all your past choices.”