"Alex has this spark at the base of his spine to do the most good he can, and when he sits there in this cubicle for hours a day and fidgets under all the minutiae, he doesn't know if he is. But if he could only figure out a way to make Texas' vote reflect its soul... he's nowhere near qualified to single-handedly dismantle Texas' iron curtains of gerrymandering, but what if..." (152)

"He thinks about roots, about first and second languages. What he wanted when he was a kid and what he wants now and where those things overlap. Maybe that place, the meeting of the two, is here somewhere, in the gentle insistence of the water around his legs, crude letters carved with a pocket knife. The steady thrum of another person's pulse against his." (224)

"If there's any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true." (242)

"When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it'd turn out he was right both times." (242)

"You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and it makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they're inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system." (259)

"Alex thinks; he's different, for sure, maybe a little darker. More neurotic, but more honest. Sharper head, wilder heart. Someone who doesn't always want to be married to work, but who has more reasons to fight than ever." (342)