Cheek to her chest, I listen to more than the story. Her skin’s smell – salted honey, the smooth and muscle of our pressed thighs, the lull of sleep and our slowed pulses. They become one. Just as the desert and the sky’s hundred-hours layers of color and the mountains and the dry tongue of road and the dead rattlesnake we found in it this morning – scaly rope fat enough to dock a boat – and the wide open parts of my chest become one. Enormous.”
-- The Author (Narration) (Memoir 1 – The Book of Hours)

Importance: This quote sketches in the intensity of the sexual and physical relationship between herself and her beloved (later identified by the name "Amaia," but here, and in the first part of the book, unnamed). The writing here evokes the author's experiences of being expanded and opened up, physically, emotionally and spiritually, by the relationship.

The ocean disappears things. It is a hungry, grabbing thing...
-- The Author (Narration) (Memoir 3 – Call My Name)