goober

“The transmigration was so visceral it was as if for a moment he inhabited two lives at once, the one in which he was a teenager stepping out into a glorious Maine autumn morning-- and every love and every possibility was waiting to be tested-- and the one now, in which heartbreak ruled and survival was the best hope. Two musics thrummed in the same heart and wove together without discord. As if every life was an instrument meant to play them both.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“He had used the word 'purloin' with Storey, who had grunted amusement. "Anachronistic and elegant," he'd said. "I think when everybody is dead you're stuck with 'scavenge'".”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“They had passed a wide cove with a pair of loons, one was probably nested nearby, and when they stroked past, the one closest tilted back her head and loosed a pitched wail that must have moved the trees like wind. It pierced the haze and echoed off the waiting forest and rolled over the water like any scream, and seemed to carry a pathos so deep it was a wonder a mere world could support it. Maybe she knew what was coming. Maybe she had hatchlings in a nest and nowhere to go and she knew.”
― Peter Heller, The River

“Sometimes at night, looking out the window at the flowing shadow of the treeline under stars blown like grass seed, and listening to the barks of geese drifting down from the high dark, he felt that he might die. Not perish, but simply cease at the apex of his own fullness. There would be a rightness in it. Joy could not be sustained for more than a minute, but what if one was lifted on a wave of happiness and - right on the breaking crest - one’s spirit flew off like a windtorn albatross?”
― Peter Heller, Burn