Important Quotes Explained
"They're good bees if you love them, and Boma does. A bird wouldn't know enough to hate a bee, I don't think. Do you?" Alice has already decided that Heaven is a hard stone's throw beyond her ken. "I wouldn't know," she says, which is the truth. Nothing in her life has prepared her to make a judgment on a war between bees and ostriches. As they walk past Boma's mailbox, which has been fashioned from a length of drainpipe and wire basket, Alice hears the faint, distant thrum of the hive. She makes up her mind that for as long as her mission takes, on this stretch of Heaven's road at least, it would be a good idea to love Boma's bees.
"You said, the night we met, that I was only capable of seeing one side of things. I've thought about that. I understand attachments between mothers and their children. But if you're right, if I have no choice here but to be a bird of prey, tearing flesh to keep my own alive, it's because I understand attachments. That's the kind of hawk I am—I've lost my other wing."
Alice stretches her legs into the pale orange morning that is taking hold around her, and it dawns on her with a strange shock that she is still the person she was as a nine-year-old. Even her body is mostly unchanged. Her breasts are of a small, sound architecture and her waist is limber and strong; she feels like one of those California buildings designed for an earthquake. As surely as her organs are in the right places, she feels Sugar is still there in Heaven. She could write her today. She's kept feelings for Sugar, her long-lost relative who came home to her one day in the checkout line. Something like that is as bad or good as a telephone ringing in the night: either way, you're not as alone as you think.
"In law school, I slept in the library pretty often. There was a couch in the women's lounge….But I always dreamed about the water in Tenkiller. All those perch down there you could catch, any time, you know? A world of free breakfast, waiting to help get you into another day. I've never been without that. Have you?"
"[Turtle's] confused because I'm confused. I think of Jax and Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and of course you, and Mattie, my boss at the tire store, all those people as my family. But when you never put a name on things, you're just accepting that it's okay for people to leave when they feel like it….That's what your family is, the people you won't let go of for anything."
