"The Names of the Mountains" by Reeve Lindbergh

The loss of a kind German shepherd is an old muffled hurt by now, gentled by more vivid losses that have accumulated over the past thirty years of the family's life like so many succeeding snowfalls, altering the landscape until one forgets the look of underlying ground. p. 24

"He's like a . . . a soft burr - you can't shake him loose!" he would shout angrily, and then laugh at Alicia's moderating response. p. 39

Writers are magpies, collecting little beads of bright things from everyday experience to feather their literary nests. p. 55

I dive into the exit like a rabbit into its own familiar burrow, away from the fearful whine and rumble of the other highway, where accumulated trucks and traffic are roaring on without me toward New York. p. 71

His face looks gaunt and newly lined. p. 73

It has such peace, my mother's own essence: stillness, containment, a wordless sufficiency. p. 76

She's so unusually, painfully sensitive. p. 96

And family background, on either side, is just one among so many things that can slowly freeze and weigh down a marriage over the years, like ice on its wings. p. 101

They both prefer small dinner parties to large social affairs, almost any kind of concert to an athletic event, and one intimate contact with one relative, whether little loved or long lost, then the organized chaos of a family reunion. p. 153

Finally, about ten minutes after the hour, the train comes in, just the way I remember it, with all the familiar self-important clankings and snortings, the heavily burdened, metallic groans I used to know. p. 164