The seat belt irked his father more than Uncle Colin’s not eating meat, because, though his father never said it, Larry knew he considered seat belts cowardly.

Maybe she’d needed her dream to come true to realize it was the wrong dream.

He was the kind of man who grew better looking the longer you knew him. Whereas Jesse began to tarnish the moment you took him off the shelf.

Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he’d been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.

He was tired of having only three channels.

At some point, Alice slipped one arm and then the other into the coat’s sleeves, she buttoned its buttons, starting at the top. Silas had followed her, still not seeing what an emblem of defeat, shame, loss, hopelessness, the coat was. With such gaps in his understanding, he saw very clearly how the boy he’d been had grown up to be the man he was.

Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he’d been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did. Maybe, after all this time, he’d started to believe their version of him.

You can bury the past but it always seems to come back, one way or another.

The land had a way of covering the wrongs of people.

Larry felt a strange forgiveness for him because all monsters were misunderstood.